Re: When should Coding Start ?

"Mark D Powell" <Mark.Powell_at_eds.com> wrote in message news:2687bb95.0411241806.568582eb_at_posting.google.com...
| robert <rchin_at_nietspampanix.com> wrote in message
news:<co31t1$t5r$1_at_reader1.panix.com>...
| > Say we are to build a new DB
| > so we do spec, requirement gathering, user interview...etc, etc
| > and finally data modeling.....
| >
| > My question is:
| > At what stage of this whole process should app coding begin ???
| >
| > Should it be when we are confident that modeling is near
| > <fill_in>% "good-to-go" and we have imported <fill_in>% of data from old
| > db ?
| >
| > thanks for your inputs
|
| The answer is it depends on your approach.
|
| Prototype - If you are going to use a rapid prototyping approach then
| you want to start coding as soon as you can so that you can put sample
| screens and reports it in front of the customer who will then with
| something to look at tell you what they really want.
|
| No prototype - You want to delay coding to as late as possible in the
| development process which will give you the time necessary to hound
| the customer daily until they finally give you a consistent story on
| what they want the system to do.
|
| With either approach you might want to code some proof of concept
| programs to validate any unproven technologies that will be required
| in the new application even when the system specifications are still
| very incomplete.
|
| HTH -- Mark D Powell --

and with either approach, consider phased implementation (subsets of the system) and make sure that requirements are properly prioritized so that less important functionality is not implemented too soon -- often getting a core system in place helps the users to understand what requirements they should have been communicating

now, ideally, really good analysis will nail down good tight requirements before anything is built -- but, unfortunately, the reality of sw dev is not enough like architectural or mechanical engineering since customers very often have much more difficulty imagining the end product with a sw application than they do with a house or a machine (of course, even those types of projects have lots of change orders once the customer starts looking at the real thing). so, it's very, very useful to design and develop in phases, if you're very careful to properly analyze the core requirements.

++ mcs Received on Thu Nov 25 2004 - 06:26:47 CST