Adding more people to a late software project makes it later.  – Fred Brooks

In fact, large software teams lead to project stagnation.  Doug Putnam published research from 491 software projects.  His research demonstrates that as a team gets smaller, its overall productivity increases:

And the effort to deliver a software project rises exponentially with the size of the development team:

This seems to be a very nonintuitive result.  How can it be that adding more people to a project makes it worse?

The answer is that software development requires tight communication between all members of the team.  A team of 2 requires only a single communication channel.  But for a team of 7 people, 21 different communication channels are required.  Each member of the team must sync with each other member so that everyone stays on the same page.  As new developers are brought on board, they must be caught up to speed by existing developers who are taking time away from new work to educate others.  Pretty soon, everyone is in meetings, writing documentation, managing wikis, sending e-mails, and trying to communicate with everyone else instead of moving the project forward.  It is not uncommon for members of large teams to spend 80-90% of their time on communicative tasks.  As a result, progress stagnates, and the schedule slips.

A team of just 2 or 3 developers, on the other hand, is a productive team.  With only a few communication channels, each member can spend most of his or her time working on the project instead of answering the questions of other team members.  Meetings can be reduced to just an hour or two per week, and extensive documentation can be replaced with lightweight communication tools.  Small teams appear less impressive, but they ultimately get more done.

At DrewCrawfordApps we deploy small teams on our development projects to deliver quality software quickly and reliably at a pace that outstrips large teams with dozens of developers.  The next time you are thinking about using a large team for a project, consider whether that team will be as productive as a lightweight and agile team without the additional communication overhead.

Higher Productivity and Lower Costs

According to VersionOne’s 2010 study, 66% of agile practitioners report faster time-to-completion for software projects.  More than half of all respondants report that agile has “Significantly Improved” or “Improved” their ability to respond to change, alignment with business objectives,   team morale, time-to-market, productivity, software quality, risk management, engineering disciple, and software maintainability.

But a significant feature of Agile is that developers are less likely to build software that is no longer needed.  When software development iterations are large or are done in a “big bang” fashion, the long lead times between specification and delivery can mean that the features requested are no longer relevant to users.  Shortening the feedback cycle means that engineering resources are spent on delivering features that are actually useful, instead of out-of-date by the time that they are delivered.

VersionOne found that 74% of those surveyed reported that morale was improved through the introduction of agile processes.  Improvement in developer morale not only means higher-quality productivity as developers are motivated to work harder to ship software, but also that the highly mobile top tier of technical talent can be more easily acquired by the organization.

Faster to Market

Rally Software’s in-depth study of agile development showed that Agile practices lead to a 37% faster time-to-market for software projects vs traditional methods.

Salesforce.com reports a +568% increase in features delivered to customers as a direct result of implementing agile methods.

Higher Quality

David Rico’s research on Agile development showed that Agile projects have a median quality improvement of 63% over traditional methods and a minimum quality improvement of 10% in the companies he surveyed.  84% of the VersionOne survey respondants felt that Agile methodologies had reduced the number of bugs by 10% or more.

Improved Client Satisfaction

With all of these improvements, it’s no wonder that these practices lead to higher satisfaction among iPhone project clients.  iPhone development is a fast-changing world that moves even more quickly than other types of web, desktop, or systems development.

Many potential clients make the common mistake of adapting a traditional software development process to the mobile development world, without a true understanding of the assumptions and underlying requirements of the development methodology.

The iOS software market is much  more competitive than the traditional software market, because there is only one primary sales channel–the Apple App Store.  As a result, millions of software products compete for the same real estate.  Even in a “niche” vertical, there are often many software vendors competing for customer dollars.  If a competitor is using a lower-cost development methodology, that competitor will be able to consistently deliver a higher-quality experience to its users, putting you out of business.

Even if you have no competitors, Apple itself dictates a rapid pace for the iPhone and iPad application market.  iOS, the iPhone and iPad operating system, is currently on a yearly release cycle.  Because of Apple’s highly secretive product roadmap, it is very difficult to predict the future in this market.  Apple’s rapid improvements to iOS can obsolete dozens of product lines from individual developers overnight.  Sudden announcements can cause an unforseen shift in development, due to added or removed functionality in the underlying operating system or new hardware capabilities.  In this challenging marketplace, it is more important than ever to adopt an agile software development process for your iPhone projects, both to stay current on the latest Apple development practices and to remain competitive in a marketplace of other agressive software developers.

It should come as no surprise that according to a study at Colorado University, an overwhelming 80% of respondents reported an increase in customer satisfaction after introducing Agile methods.  Agile development methodologies are an important ingredient in our overall strategy at DrewCrawfordApps to deliver the highest quality software at the fastest possible speed.  When selecting a development partner for your iPhone project, make sure you are working with a development team with an understanding of the unique challenges of the iOS marketplace and with a development strategy that will lead to success for your iPhone development project.