Here's a thoughtful webcast talk about 'lean start-ups':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnaLQiQL9ec
Lean start-up is not limited to your traditional start-up company. Rather, it can also refer to a small department in a large company. Essentially, the speaker, Ries, believes that an effective lean start-up can be boiled down to rapid releases. Ries suggests a couple of techniques to get to rapid releases. One of the more radical technique is continuous deployment where source check-ins that pass integration tests are deployed automatically. Of course, there would need to be a mechanism in place to revert back quickly. Ries also describes split testing where new features are tested in parallel with existing code, essentially a control and experimental group comparison. Ries also recommends asking the 5-why's on every issue (e.g., asking why did this bug occur 5 times at different level from the programming level to the management level).
This talk is worth the hour if you are interested in improving your development process.
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Another talk along the same line:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.infoq.com/presentations/turning-on-a-sixpence
An interesting points:
- Plan only for features that can be released in a week. Break complex features into the barest minimum.
- Resolves issues NOW instead of queuing them up in an issue tracking system.
- Pay down technical debt as you go. Don't stop to refactor.