Product Development Methodologies

June 22, 2005 4:14 PM

Can anyone recommend a good, practical (non academic) phased approach Product Development Methodology (not project management) for a relatively small internet based (ad supported media) product?

I have googled this extensively, and most of what I have seen is overkill, such as what is on the Product Development Body of Knowledge. Looking for a short and sweet version that's worked for you all. Sorry... I'm just a bit far afield of my experience here, which is project management.

posted by psmealey to Education (3 answers total)

I'v been happy using the scrum methodolgy for building software:
http://www.controlchaos.com/about/

If you're speaking of an overall Product Management strategy,
that's something else.
posted by ctdean at 5:32 PM on June 22, 2005

Extreme programming or an agile methodology like Scrum (above).

http://www.extremeprogramming.org/

You should consider some of the tenets listed there even if you don't embrace all of it. Pair programming can be hard to swallow, but the story process, frequent releases and constant communication w/ customer (internal or external) is vital.

If you adopt nothing else, please consider unit testing.
posted by gnash at 6:48 PM on June 22, 2005

Joel on Software has mucho advice. Very, very good. See also his software project management books.

If you're talking about specs development, as opposed to actual coding, ... er, dunno.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:23 PM on June 22, 2005