Adopt, Adapt or Build Your Own - Web Development Methodology

Once the decision had been made to find a better way of doing things, we realised we had three paths to choose from:

• adopt an existing methodology
• adapt from an existing methodology
• build our own methodology

The development team was divided on this issue. Some members believed we should make it up ourselves; others said we should avoid re-inventing the wheel. It was clear we had to do some research to work out which was the best path for us.

At the time, there were no recognised Web methodologies (although, from recent research it appears that the situation hasn't changed much). So, for adopting or adapting, we had little choice but to look at the existing software development methodologies.

Evaluation Criteria

When we started looking for methodologies, we decided that it was important to know what we were looking for. The first step was to decide on the criteria by which we would evaluate them.

Complexity

The solution had to be more than just a simple guide, but at the other end of the scale, if it was too big, there was no way it would work. We needed something that was easy to understand on the surface -- as both staff and clients had to be able to grasp it -- but had sufficient depth to give developers the guidance they needed.

Size

It's hard to get people to read documentation at the best of times, so a thick document explaining the methodology was unlikely to be effective. Chances were that, if we had a 100-page guide with a 10-page summary at the end, most people would use only the summary.

Cost

Anything that cost money would have to be justified; the less money that was required, the better.

Risk

We couldn't afford to get the methodology wrong. It was extremely unlikely that I'd be able to convince people to go through the process of trying a second methodology if the first one didn't work.

Pragmatic

The solution had actually to work, not be based on theory. There had to be real-world examples of projects to which it had been applied successfully, more than once!