How To Ensure Quality In Your Software Development Process

One of the challenging things about being a functional lead in the knowledge economy is that you are at all times confronted by two contending forces — protecting your team from overload while delivering quality software at a frequent and sustainable pace. Balancing these forces requires skills in negotiation and compromise as you face the presets in an organisation's product management architecture.

My own search for quality at a sustainable pace led me to the origins of Lean software development and the Kanban method — and five practices that I believe are essential: visualising your workflow, balancing demand against throughput, collaborative planning and design, functional testing and TDD, and the meticulous use of design patterns.