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Effective SDLC Tailoring
Dr. Andrew Makar is an IT program manager and is the author of the Microsoft Project Made Easy series. For more project management advice, visit the website TacticalProjectManagement.com.
In the systems development, the “one size fits all” methodology doesn’t apply to every project. IT organizations expect project managers to follow a standard set of project and systems development lifecycle processes to deliver projects on time and within budget.
The number of SDLC processes required for a new system implementation is significantly different from the number of processes required to deploy an enhancement release. The amount of SDLC process for bug fixes is different from new enhancements. From an infrastructure perspective, infrastructure consolidation projects adopting virtualization technologies are different from in-house application development processes.
Mature methodologies recognize these differences and adept project managers tailor and customize SDLC processes to the scope of the project or program. Tactically, the SDLC is often customized by identifying the inventory of tasks and process deliverables that will be removed or customized to fit the scope of the project. This is often done using a MS-Excel or MS-Word document to identify all the processes and tasks that are included or excluded in the project tailoring.
A summary of tailoring decisions are presented and signed off by the senior manager, PMO or process quality assurance analyst. The tailored processes and deliverables are then incorporated in …
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