Excellence by Design
Best Practices
Think of it as the business equivalent of gene splicing -- you can benefit from some other company's evolutionary history without having to go through the pain of inventing a successful practice yourself. But be Darwinian, and make sure someone else's best practice fits your business circumstances."
(Bob
Lewis, "Survival Guide" from InfoWorld.com, 11/20/02)
At DCI, we believe it is important to make a distinction between Best Practices and common practice. A Best Practice is a management or technical practice that has been consistently demonstrated to significantly improve the bottom line. That is, the practice has been shown to significantly improve one or more of the following aspects of software development and delivery, and in so doing, to demonstrate high ROI:
- Better Productivity
- Lower Development and/or Lower maintenance cost
- Shorter schedule
- Quality
- User satisfaction
- Predictability of cost and schedule
