Feature Driven Development (FDD) Methodology

Jeff De Luca and Peter Coad were both greatly involved in developing the Feature Driven Development methodology. Peter describes FDD as having “just enough process to ensure scalability and repeatability while encouraging creativity and innovation.

More specifically, Feature Driven Development asserts that:

• A system for building systems is necessary in order to scale to larger projects.
• A simple, but well-define process will work best.
• Process steps should be logical and their worth immediately obvious to each team member.
• “Process pride” can keep the real work from happening.
• Good processes move to the background so team members can focus on results.
• Short, iterative, feature-driven life cycles are best.

FDD proceeds to address the items above with this simple process (numbers in brackets indicate the project time spent):

1. Develop an overall model (10 percent initial, 4 percent ongoing)
2. Build a features list (4 percent initial, 1 percent ongoing)
3. Plan by feature (2 percent initial, 2 percent ongoing)
4. Design by feature
5. Build by feature (77 percent for design and build combined)

References
Jim Highsmith, Agile Software Development Ecosystems

Other Methodologies

• Adaptive Project Framework
• Agile Software Development
• Crystal Methods
• Dynamic Systems Development Model (DSDM)
• Extreme Programming (XP)
• Feature Driven Development (FDD)
• Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
• Joint Application Development (JAD)
• Lean Development (LD)
• PRINCE2
• Rapid Application Development (RAD)
• Rational Unified Process (RUP)
• Scrum
• Spiral
• Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
• TenStep Project Management Process
• Waterfall (a.k.a. Traditional)

For a high-level look at project management in general, check out my introduction to project management fundamentals.