Software development processes within a team

[keymoo]

Hi,

I'm working in a software development team for a large investment bank producing software for traders. The team is not working too well at the moment with the project getting delayed, lots of bugs, developers working too many hours and I can see signs of stress and exhaustion. I think the problem with this particular project is one of management and I may have to step in and assume this role.

Before I do this, I wanted some good reference material on software development processses. We currently do not produce functional specs, don't have any testers, no bug tracking database and no-one adheres to the plan. On the contrary to this there are some very intelligent, talent on the team, it just needs to be channelled and harnessed in the right way to get the most from them. I want to get a throrough understanding of various software engineering processes including Agile, Waterfall, etc to find out what may best fit our needs and to provide a point of discussion with the dev team.

Any insights on this, especially articles on the internet, books, etc appreciated.

keymoo

[samjh]

A good compendium of articles and opinion pieces:
http://www.realsoftwaredevelopment.com/

A pretty good management book:
Dynamics of Software Development (http://www.amazon.com/Dynamics-Software-Development-Best-Practices/dp/0735623198/ref=pd_bbs_2/105-2761972-3294068?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195474259&sr=8-2)

Wikipedia has surprisingly comprehensive content of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process

A highly recommended book for software development from coding styles to quality assurance to basic team management:
Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction (http://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook-Construction/dp/0735619670/ref=sid_dp_dp/105-2761972-3294068)

[pmasiar]

For good software development process, search for "test driven developement" and especially "extreme programming". Canonical reference of XP is c2.com website, the "software pattern wiki". It is first original wiki BTW :-)

Compared to more-less generic process description as in previous post, TDD and XP are concrete methodologies. XP is based on releases every 2 weeks, while working 9-5, you may like it :-)