When starting a new software project, there are many decisions that need to be made. Every decision can be phrased as a question. The following checklist outlines the questions that should be asked, and answered, as early in the life of a new software project as possible.
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And now, the list!
- Who is on the team (and what are their roles)?
- Who is ultimately responsible for the project (management owner)?
- Who is the project being built to support? Who will its users be?
- Who does the team coordinate with downstream (for QA, deployments, support, etc. if any)?
- Who does the team coordinate with upstream (for requirements, direction, prioritization, etc.)?
- How will/does the team communicate?
- Is there an email alias for the team?
- Is there a list of team members and their contact information available?
- Is there a real-time chat tool configured (Teams, Slack, Discord, etc.)?
- Does the team have any regular standing meetings?
- Daily standup or sync meeting?
- Periodic demo to customer/management?
- Iteration/sprint-related meetings?
- What is the ultimate goal of the app? What problem does it solve?
- What are the "user personas" of the app?
- What kind of app is the team building? What hardware will it run on (web, mobile, desktop, etc.)?
- What kind of methodology will the team use to collaborate (Kanban, Scrum, XP, etc.)?
- What framework(s) will the app be built with/on?
- What architectural pattern(s) will the app leverage?
- What programming language(s) will the app be written in?
- What code formatting standards has the team adopted?
- What persistence store(s) will the app use?
- What kinds of tests will the app require?
- Unit tests
- Integration tests
- Functional tests
- UI tests
- Load tests
- Security tests
- What will the initial source control structure look like?
- Where does code go?
- Where do tests go?
- Where do docs go?
- Where do build scripts go?
- What is the branching strategy used?
- What is the main branch called?
- What is the dev branch (if any) called?
- Are there other long-lived branches (per release, per feature, etc)?
- What process is envisioned for accepting commits?
- Pull requests?
- Approvals required?
- Automated build/test pass required?
- What team members have admin access?
- What build/deploy automation tools does the app use?
- Where is the team located, physically?
- If remote, what remote collaboration tools will be used?
- Where will the project's artifacts (code, work items, builds, etc) be located?
- When is the project due?
- When is the first milestone due?
- When is the first proof-of-concept demo planned for?
- Why is the company building this app?
- Why is the company building this app?
- Why is the company building this app?
- Why is the company building this app?
- Why were the decisions made on this list chosen vs. their alternatives?
- Consider recording Architecture Decision Records
- How the application is deployed? Where? On-premise, cloud?
- How often the application is deployed?
- How do different parts of the app communicate with one another?
- In process library method calls
- Out of process API calls
- Out of process async messages
- How does the system communicate with its persistence store?
- Direct SQL calls
- OR/M
- How does the system communicate with other dependencies?
- HTTP client
- FTP
- Shared database
- Carrier pigeon
- How will the app handle cross-cutting concerns?
- Logging
- Security/Auth
- Auditing
- Monitoring and Health Checks