Investigate an agile, lightweight, "value-up" approach to software engineering

Most accepted project management wisdom comes from the world of roads and bridges, where design risks are low, design cost is small relative to build cost, and the opportunity to to deliver incremental value is rare. This "work-down" approach is easily envisioned as burning down a list of tasks, and works well for engineering projects with low risk, low variance, and well-understood design. In contrast, most new software development projects undertaken are those that haven't been done before or those whose predecessors are not publicly available; there are no roadmaps to follow, no predetermined task lists. This business reality, more than any other factor, is what makes software development so hard and risky, and makes attention to process so important. Accordingly, in recent years, agility in software processes has become mainstream, supplanting the "work-down" approach. Investigate an agile, "value-up" approach to software engineering in this sample chapter from Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System. The approach focuses on simplicity and lightweight methods, and embraces the paradigm of customer value, change, variance, and situationally specific actions as part of everyday practice.

Title: Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System
ISBN: 0321278720
Published: May 2006
Authors: Sam Guckenheimer, Juan J. Perez
Chapter: Chapter 1: A Value-Up Paradigm
Published by Addison Wesley Professional