Symbian for Software Leaders: Principles of Successful Smartphone Development Projects

Chapter 8. Managing integration

Integration vs. creation

Here is one model for developing software. According to this model, the most difficult part of the overall task is creating new software. That is where the best developers should be assigned. Less competent developers can be assigned to less critical tasks, such as build, integration, and test.

I mention this model in order to say that it is completely inappropriate for most smartphone development projects. If followed, it will result in project failure. Some pieces of software that are individually enchanting may be created in the process, but these pieces will not reach the market.

Instead, it is a cardinal principle of successful smartphone development that you assign some of the most experienced and skilled engineers to the tasks of build, integration, and test. These tasks cannot be thought of as somehow secondary, deserving only the "B team". You must think of these tasks as having primary importance, deserving staffing from the "A team".

Many developers prefer doing "green field" development of brand new pieces of software, to working with existing software that has been developed by other people. This is a natural psychological tendency. However, project leaders need to fight this tendency. The vast bulk of software used by any given smartphone project has already been written, by people in other teams or in other companies. You cannot seriously contemplate rewriting anything more than a small fraction of this software. ...