Development is the stage in your project when you begin to see your dream become reality. If design is the stage in which the blueprints and the drawings of the house are made, this is the stage in which we start pouring the foundation and framing the your structure. Next will come the walls and the roof, then the windows and floor covers. It all builds on itself until you finally get the keys and it’s ready to move in.
Much like building a house, software has similar stages. Care must be taken when pouring that foundation or the entire structure is at risk. Even if the structure doesn’t fail from the bad foundation, it will still take a great deal of extra time and resources to compensate for it. It is a painful and widely known fact in our industry that projects suffer financial and deadline overrun 75% of the time. The majority of the time this can be traced back to an unstable foundation.
Ways that the foundation can go bad
- Lacking a clear design before starting.
- Not allocating enough time or resources to the initial build causing people to rush to completion.
- Not following clean code techniques. Code should be able to be read like a recipe, the purpose, ingredients, and steps should be obvious. Properly written code can be audited for mistakes and quality by not just programmers but potentially by stakeholders.
With a proper foundation and code that has been held to a clean code standard changes and additions become easier, have faster turn around, and more efficient collaborative efforts and transitions.