Software Development Strategy

strat-e-gy: a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim.

The New Oxford American Dictionary

The dictionary definition points us in the right direction. The software development strategy is your highest level plan for achieving your software project's objectives. According to Watts Humphrey, the strategy is “the order in which product functions features or requirements are defined, designed, implemented, and tested.”

What does this mean? This means that the plan of action part of your strategy lays out what you build first, what you build next, and so on. It also lays out how are you going to validate the strategy. The strategy also lays out the policies for risk mitigation and decision making. Sections of the strategy may exists both along the developer - customer continuum and also along the system abstraction levels continuum. For details about these continuums see: Multilevel Planning and Component-Based Development.

The System Architect is responsible for the overall strategy. The strategy has to be sound enough that designers and implementors working on parts of the system receive from it the necessary guidance to aid their technical decisions. A well conceived strategy pushes the decision making down to the lowest possible level, closest to where the problems are encountered, while at the same time provides for the oversight necessary to build a coherent system.

Accompanying the development strategy is the testing strategy. The testing strategy focuses on the various testing activities, including the system validation and verification activities. It is constructed similarly and serves the same purpose as the development strategy, only for testing. The owner of the testing strategy may be the System Test Architect, if there is one, otherwise this is also owned by the System Architect.

Why do you need a strategy? Without a strategy it is difficult, if not impossible, to execute an iterative, incremental development process. The strategy ties the iterations into a coherent whole, and allows the team to move confidently toward the goal. Your first attempt at creating a strategy may feel awkward, but with practice you’ll get better at it.

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