Incremental Building Strategy Delivers Large Software Projects

Part Four in the Series: Software Development Guide for Business Leaders

For larger development projects, using the Incremental Build Model for software development can improve project success and get useful products into production quicker. By using an incremental build model to develop smaller, fully functional components, you are breaking the project into smaller, more easily digestible chunks. This model leads to greater success, improved client approval, and better functionality.

Why Break the Project into Smaller Increments?

The project management team may break a larger project into smaller pieces when delivering, delighting and getting customer feedback are important. Accomplish this by having the project entirely defined, scoped and then chunked into deliverable components.

Sometimes the best plan of attack on any large project is to use a divide and conquer technique. Using this approach helps to deliver good software solutions to the customer quickly. Using this strategy produces customer goodwill, a feedback channel from the client and helps the project team achieve a series of small successes which is great for morale.

We suggest that for any big project you consider breaking it down using the Incremental Build model so you can divide and conquer it and delight and deliver to your customer.

The solution starts to sound like an Agile project, but it has nothing to do with the project management technique employed. It’s a strategy to deliver quickly and get valuable customer feedback.

Use of Incremental on Larger Projects

Project managers and clients can decide to break a larger a project into smaller increments. An Incremental Model's success hinges on a complete scope and requirements. Once detailed and documented, the project can be broken into smaller, deliverable, pieces and delivered in stages throughout the project.

Breaking a larger project into smaller increments can reduce the cost of initial product delivery but may increase the cost of the whole project.

Another benefit of an incremental build is the stream of customer feedback on each increment that can help to identify deficiencies, additional features, and product changes which lead to a better final product.

By breaking the project into smaller increments, then using a traditional waterfall project management technique, the project manager can plan, define, develop and test each increment.

Because few changes are made within any single increment complete regression testing to identify development deficiencies can happen quickly.

How Does the Incremental Build Strategy Improve Success, Client Approval, and Functionality?

Your customer, whether an internal department or an external client, wants to get their hands on their applications as soon as they can. When you deliver, using an Incremental Model, you delight them by delivering; then engage them for feedback. The result is a better product and a stronger relationship with your customer.

On your next larger development project, use the Incremental Build Strategy to break it down into smaller chunks to delight your customer, deliver quicker and to develop better projects.

CoreSolutions of London, Ontario, is a locally acclaimed software development firm with over 25 years of experience. CoreSolutions’s team of experts, including developers and project managers, build web or mobile applications using the latest technology and tools and will assist you through all phases of the project including brainstorming, requirements planning and project management. Connect with CoreSolutions today to start your project with a Free Business Systems Requirement.