2.1 Introduction 

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With a growing number of members in a development team, it is essential to clarify how to structure, plan, and control the development project. Readers of this document might not be new to application development in Domino, here we provide a brief review about the software development project methodology. Following the software development methodology selected by your company is essential for a successful application.

The waterfall method is a commonly used application development methodology. It is a sequential development approach, in which development is seen as flowing steadily downwards (like a waterfall) through the phases of requirements analysis, design, implementation, testing (validation), integration, and maintenance. Each stage is supposed to finish before the next phase starts, or at least have a minimal overlap only. Each phase of the project has to be signed off by the customer and his stakeholders.


While the classic waterfall methodology ends with "maintenance", most projects, including Domino applications, are often extended or upgraded throughout their lifetime. Though each upgrade might be handled as a project by its own, we discuss application upgrade and retirement here together with these application software development phases.

For more information about software development methods, refer to the following:

• DeveloperWorks article Introducing the IBM Rational Unified Process essentials by analogy :http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/05/wessberg/
• Crystal Clear by Alistair Cockburn, ISBN-13: 978-0201699470

Parent topic: 2.0 Application development lifecycle