Managing Your Software Development Life Cycle

I gave a session on Managing Your Software Development Life Cycle at the CF.Objective() Conference last week. Below are the materials from the session. These are some of the tools that we use daily to implement the SDLC process discussed in the session.

• Presentation Handouts
• Functional Specification Template
• Service Level Agreement Template
• Release Scope Planning Spreadsheet

The Functional Specification Template is a generic guide for creating a functional specification. I encourage you to use the portions of it that are relative to your business. So remove or augment as appropriate.

The Service Level Agreement Template is essential to running a service oriented technology organization. It sets the expectations on both sides for the service quality you will provide. Your organization may be suited for different uptime and responsiveness metrics. Whatever the appropriate metrics are, it is essential to have agreement with your customer on what those are.

The Release Scope Planning Spreadsheet is an incredibly useful tool for collaborating with business partners or customers on the scope, timing, and staffing of releases. This allows you to "show your work". With this many developers and this much time, we can deliver X. This spreadsheet template is designed to forecast out 4 releases so you can always work within the context of what comes next.

Enjoy! Jason