Essential reading for all startups
Software development is a very strange animal indeed. Despite decades and decades of practice, by incredibly smart people, and with very strong incentives, we are not necessarily any closer to delivering product on time, and within budget, (oh yeah, and on-feature). Entire forests of books have surely been sacrificed to argue one methodology over another, but a truth that I believe is becoming clear is that every situation is different. There is no String Theory here. Agile is a good example - fantastic in many scenarios, but not necessarily for every project.
If you're in the start-up space like we are, there is one "book" be sure to check out - "Getting Real" by the folks at 37signals. If you're working for a large corporation, read it anyway - it may not be 100% relevant, but might just convince you to leave (or stay!) 
I say "book" in inverted commas because it really is more a collection of thoughts (free to read online, hard copy for a price). Their ideologies strongly centre on how to succeed within contraints, and offer great wisdom on the benefits of staying focussed on core value. Development methodology follows from their business methodology - start with the critical features, iterate quickly, and prioritise developer productivity. Joel will be pleased 
Other chapters offer their insights on a bunch of other issues we all face whilst in Start-Up land- thoroughly recommended.
This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 11:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.