Project Management Best practices
1. Structure your contract in the following way
a) give an initial estimate for the project
b) do the inception phase at a fixed cost
Inception phase aim :
1) get the Business use cases out
2) get a hold on the scope of the project
3) freeze the scope of project
c) after you understand the scope sign a purchase order.

points : giving an estimate without knowing the functionality and scope is just firing a bullet in the dark

2. Put effort in documenting and getting sign offs on the requirements. This is very important for two reasons
a) makes the client more aligned with the requirements
b) In a Offshore model this works out the best.

points : in a sub contracting work mode documenting is a very important thing . legal binding / clarity . Maybe in a totally in house shop it does not make that much sense to document as the effort to documentation is quite significant and that need to point the finger in BAD times is not there. This time should be budgeted by the client and development partner.

3. Have a formal process for documenting and changing requirements. Use case and Use case realization discussion.

Best practice
1. Use Mock objects and stubs .
2. Build a full Test Database from scratch using
3. Dotn exptect the Infrastructure to be ready.

Use prudence before starting a discussion

Example : we ended up spending 30 minutes (with 8 senior people) on a discussion as follows.

While going through the enrollment process . If I want to see the FAQ. should the FAQ be a pop up or or a left navigation item. Reason . if I go to Left nav . How do I get back to enrollment again. (should it be the first enrollment screen or the screen from which I had left or should the FAQ be pop up).

Now all these are valid discussions. But dont waste everybodys time discussion in vapor. It would probably take 30 minutes by a developer to implement any of these scenarios.

Business Use case and Technical Use cases

1.It is very easy to mix the two types of use cases
2. It also is not easy to think abotu business Process flow without technology flow as Technolgy also drives the Business Process


So it is a fine line . No doubt


Some pointers to keep them seperate



1. Decide on the general states of the application
2. embrace the existing technology paradigms in the organization . (Batch modes and real time modes and try to make use cases after embracing them)