I couldn’t agree with you more Kelly. Bureaucracy kills process, at least when software development is concerned, large corporation form barriers between department entities by instituting documentation and bureaucracy as a means of communication between entities. The entities form defensive postures around their documentation as a safety net and comfort zone to protect them from retaliation from other entities and management. Customer focus and quality are always preached upon as being paramount but tend to take a second seat to heavy weight documentation.

My goal in outlining this process was to break down those barriers and instill trust and communication as the primary focus of all the stakeholders.

Kelly Waters
http://www.allaboutagile.com | Blog
http://www.groups.google.com/group/allaboutagile | Forum

I do want to point out though that this is overkill for a small development team as it is engineered around minimizing not ELIMINATING communication points in the corporate arena.

I love to talk to other developers and ask them, “So how long did you stay to maintain the software after you put it into production?” “Was the software as maintainable as you predicted?” “What was the ramp up time for new developers to the team that had to come into a maintenance role?” I would say a majority of them left, right after the project was completed and couldn’t answer the remainder of the questions honestly.

I have been with this company for the past 3 years. The ONLY reason why I believe this works is because we made ALL the mistakes and presumptions of taking the small agile software development shop approach and expecting it to work in corporate America. It is only through learning from our mistakes that we can persevere in the end.