Creating Development work practice
The development work practice outlines the development phase of the project. The purpose of this work practice is to highlight the major deliverables/products and processes. The development phase defines the way the project deliverables are built, and the major components required.
Getting ready
Before starting, it is important to have an understanding of your project methodology and determine:
- The existing work practices
- The key roles which will be involved in the work practice
How to do it...
Work practices are best created as a visual tool. To do this, start up a diagramming tool such as Microsoft Visio or Microsoft PowerPoint:
- In the diagramming application, create a new tab or slide called Development.
- On the diagram, create swimlanes. In each swimlane, add the key role.
- Step through this phase of the project logically, and add the key products/deliverables and processes.
- A sample development work practice is shown here:
- Once you have created your products and processes, you will need to describe each of them:
For example, Physical Data Model is the actual scripts required to build the objects for the project data model
- Once all the products and processes are described, you can determine the deliverables for each product and the role responsible for delivering it, based on the swimlane.
For example, the deliverable for Physical Data Model is the single script per object within the data model, outlining all the characteristics and definitions for the object developed by the DBA.
How it works...
Work practices give members of the project a quick and easy way to understand the flow of activities within the phase, and all the deliverables required with the phase.
There's more...
In the development phase, it is easy to overdo a documentation. In order to avoid this, divide your documentation into two parts:
- Project document: This is required by the project, to deliver.
- Production documentation: This is required by the users and maintainers of the project to understand and work with the application.
Try and reduce the number of documents in the first category and replace them with documents from the second category, which will live on and become useful user guides or working documents.