As AceProject grows, it takes longer to put out a new version. There is more to test, the documentation takes longer to be finished, and debugging is a growing monster.

Typical of waterfall development methods.

Daniel, our president, was tired of this. He wanted us to be able to release versions faster, more efficiently. Instead of having a release-based development cycle, we’ll have a feature-base development cycle. This means when a feature is out of the initial development phase, it will go straight to testing, documentation and debugging. It’s going to be easier to test just the one feature and its implications. It’s going to be faster to write documentation for just one feature at a time. It’s going to be a lot easier for developers to debug the feature they just developed, because it’s fresh in their minds.

On another level, it’s going to create one big team of the developers, testers and writer. Instead of the technical writer waiting for development to be done to start working, he will be working with them, as they develop the software. Documentation and testing teams often feel on the fringe of the development teams. Having everyone working together will benefit not only AceProject as a product, but also Websystems as a company.

We’ll be letting you know how that goes!