Software development

Agility

The pressure for software to change to business demands are increasing. The never-ending iteration of improvement, especially required on the web, is harsh reality for most developers. Before a product is finished, the requirements for it has changed. The ability to change lies in a combination of architecture and process. Agility does not come at a fixed price. A tool or product can assist the agile software, but the process for it to become a reality, must come from the organization, from people.

Drive

The force behind all projects comes from the drive and motivation of the project members. A transparent environment can facilitate motivation and drive, by eliminating obstacles and miscommunication.

Requirements

The attitude "I don't want to touch that. It'll take forever, and I don't know what will break if I do." is a very real problem because software needs to change. Rather than rewrite every time we need to change existing code or add new code, we need to be able to build on what we have. That's what maintainability is all about, and that's what enables us to meet a business's changing needs. With unmaintainable code we're moving slower than we'd like, which often leads to the ever-increasing pressure to deliver, which ends up making us deliver still more poorly written code. That's a vicious cycle that must end if we want to be able to consistently deliver. Test Driven: Practical TDD and Acceptance TDD for Java Developers

It's constant exertion of requirements on the product, that ultimately ensures success and quality.