What is a Software Development Plan?
A software development plan describes the development process step by step. It covers:
- Planning
- Ideation
- Development
- Documentation
- Deployment
- Launch
- Maintenance
The goal of a software development plan is to answer the following questions:
#1 Which functionality is chosen to solve this problem?
#2 Which tasks need to be formed to develop the described functionality?
#3 What is the order of the feature development?
#4 Who is involved in the project?
#5 How is responsibility divided among the team members?
#6 What are the expected dependencies in the product?
#7 What quality metrics will define the efficiency of the project and the quality of the product?
How do we write a Software Development Plan?
#1 Introduction
This section describes the purpose of the software development project and products. We include:
- Product description: product concept goals for the development
- Project needs: this section refers to business and functionality objectives.
- Abbreviations: describing all the used acronyms, special symbols, etc.
#2 Project Organization
#2 Project Organization
#3 Management
We include:
- Estimates: predicted duration and cost of the project
- Project Plan: meaning an approximate schedule, the project’s main stages and available resources.
- Development Phases
- Objectives
- Release Plants with the expected release dates and status, beta, demo, alpha, etc.
Resourcing: describing available and unavailable skills, hardware and software.
#4 Steps of Project Control
#5 Maintenance and Support
The next point in the maintenance section is documentation our development team guarantees to deliver and the description of post-release cooperation, as well as future releases. We believe that setting up a clear algorithm for further support of the project ensures its long-term viability and scalability.
Possible Risks of Project Planning
- First, estimates are highly approximate. If a vendor promises to deliver everything at some definite time and on a budget, these experts lack experience in planning. A trustworthy team always takes margins of error into account.
- The bigger the scope, the higher the risks, the more stages there are in a project, the more bottlenecks can occur.
- Plans can tackle wrong needs. It’s necessary to rewrite a software development plan and make sure it always suits the latest project needs.
Plans do not correlate with users’ best interests. Defining your target audience and talking to potential clients is the key stage of successful software development planning. - All teams aren’t on the same page. If you have external teams, make sure you include them in the process of planning.
Our team's best practices for creating a software development plan
#1 Break the process of creating a plan into modules. We suggest defining each plan section as a module and assigning responsible team members.
#2 Research must be shared in real time
#3 The plan must be constantly revisited and modified.
#4 The team must ask for users’ opinions.
All in all, software development planning is just as impactful as the development itself. It’s a long-term investment, a plan will be one of your main documents for years. You can even reuse approaches in other projects and for other products.
Our team's best practices for creating a software development plan
#1 Break the process of creating a plan into modules. We suggest defining each plan section as a module and assigning responsible team members.
#2 Research must be shared in real time
#3 The plan must be constantly revisited and modified.
#4 The team must ask for users’ opinions.
All in all, software development planning is just as impactful as the development itself. It’s a long-term investment, a plan will be one of your main documents for years. You can even reuse approaches in other projects and for other products.
