Contents of the Book

There has been so much interest in what is written in “Principles for Maturing Your System Development Life Cycle: The Ultimate Guide to the SDLC” that I’ve decided to publish this descriptive table of contents. I hope it satisfies your curiosity, but if you have any further questions, please feel free to send me an email.

•    Forward
•    Chapter 1—Introduction
     o Rationale and purpose of the SDLC
     o Organizational change management and its impact on the successful implementation and adoption of the SDLC
     o IT Governance and how the SDLC’s processes help decide IT Investment opportunities
     o Project Management method and its synergies with the SDLC
     o Compares the project management triangle (i.e., scope, time and cost) to my invention of the SDLC triangle (i.e., quality, consistency and product delivery)
     o Compares the five basic process groups of project management to the five basic process groups of the SDLC
     o Ties it all together by presenting my third invention, my theory on the three-legged stool of IT business value: IT Governance, Project Management and the SDLC
•    Chapter 2—System Development Models
     o Discussion of team empowerment
     o Historical look at the evolution of twelve traditional waterfall, agile and hybrid development models to examine shared commonalities and best practices
     o Waterfall, Modified Waterfall, the Spiral Model, V-Model and Dual V-Model
     o RAD, Scrum, Crystal, Extreme Programming and Dynamic System Development Model
     o Incremental Commitment Model and Lean Philosophy
     o Best practice comparison charts
•    Chapter 3—Requirements Maturity, IT Governance & Planning
     o Poor requirements and project failures
     o Importance of business analysis training
     o IT Governance
          Structure
          Work intake and the requirements process
     o Requirements Process
     o Importance of Requirements Maturity
     o Requirements Planning
•    Chapter 4—Requirements Elicitation
     o Requirements Elicitation Activities and Techniques
          Brainstorming
          Focus Group
          Interview
          Observation
          Prototyping
          Modeling standards: UML and BPMN; Emerging standard: SOMF
          Requirements Workshop
               Managing Scope Creep
          Survey
•    Chapter 5—Requirements Documentation & Quality
     o Requirements Documentation
     o Business Requirements Definition
     o Good Requirements Quality Checklist
•    Chapter 6—Requirements Analysis, Inspection & Tracing
     o Document Analysis
     o Interface Analysis
     o System Requirements Specification
     o Quality Assurance Inspection Stage Gate
     o Baselining Requirements Artifacts
     o Traceability Matrix
     o Requirements Phase Artifacts
•    Chapter 7—Design & Development
     o System Design Specification
     o System Analysis Methods:
     o Business Process Analysis & Design
     o Object-oriented Analysis & Design
     o Service-oriented Analysis & Design
     o Structured Analysis & Design
     o Data Modeling
     o Design Quality Review Stage Gate
     o Development Cycles
          Kick-off Meeting
          Daily Stand up
          Test-Driven or Test First Development
          The Development Cycle
     o Development & Coding Standards
•    Chapter 8—Pre-Implementation Activities & Artifacts
     o Implementation Plan
     o Detailed Test Plan
     o Training Artifacts
     o Operational Turnover Artifacts
     o Service Level Agreements
     o Change Request
     o Design & Development Phase Artifacts
•    Chapter 9—Quality Assurance & Implementation
     o Quality Assurance vs. Quality Control
     o Quality Models and Standards
     o Defect Classification
          Simple Classification System
          Orthogonal Defect Classification
     o The SDLC Test Battery
     o Verification Readiness Review
     o Release Management
     o Configuration Management
     o Subcontractor Management
     o Multi-Cultural Training
     o Implementation Readiness Review
     o Deployment
     o Operational Readiness Review
•    Chapter 10—Continuous Improvement
     o Embedding Continuous Improvement into and organization
     o Business Transformation Governance
     o W. Edwards Deming on Business Transformation
     o Capability Maturity Model Integration
     o Kaizen
     o Theory of Constraints
          Microsoft TOC Case Study
     o Kanban
          Corbis Kanban Case Study
     o Scrum-ban
     o Statistical Analysis Variants
          Six Sigma
          Lean Six Sigma
          Theory of Constraints Lean Six Sigma
     o IT Performance Measurement
     o SDLC Metrics
          Lifecycle Framework Metrics
               Cost of Quality
               Defects
               Effort
               Requirements
               Size Variance
          Value Chain Metrics
               Knowledge Transfer
               Quality of Service
               Steady State
          Quality Assurance Metrics
•    Chapter 11—Handy Desk Reference
     o The Principles
     o Twenty-four of the most important diagrams and tables
     o Good Requirements Quality Checklist