What is GreenWizard’s Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) and why does it matter to our customers?  Simply put, the right SDLC enables a software company like GreenWizard to respond rapidly to requests and feedback while the wrong SDLC can lead to delays, long turnaround times for new features, and software that does not satisfy the needs of its users.

Waterfall, Agile, Lean, Iterative

There are many SDLCs and each has their own purpose.  A software team must understand what kind of software they’re building, who their audience is, and what their end users’ needs are.

For example, if you are writing software for the space shuttle, you’re probably following a Waterfall model. Strict requirements are defined up front, precisely documented, carefully constructed, and thoroughly tested.  Development goes one way (down the waterfall) and it is necessarily expensive to go back and change prior development stages.  Software created via the Waterfall model tends to release new versions infrequently and after great effort (e.g, space shuttle software, operating systems, and big packages like Microsoft Office, Quickbooks, or an Oracle database).

Green building — and construction in general — follows a Waterfall process.  Spec documents are prepared, plans are drawn, products are assessed, and then construction begins.  It is necessarily expensive to go back and change the spec after construction has started.

Opposite Waterfall is Iterative and incremental development.  Frequent and small revisions are the hallmark of incremental development.  Methodologies like Agile and Lean are both incremental approaches to software development.  Rather than, say, developing one hundred new features for a major release once per year, an agile team can release four new features every two weeks.  The number of new features is the same, but the software’s users are not waiting an entire year to use them.  Feedback supplied along the way guides further development ensuring projects never go far off course.

Applications written for and deployed to the web are perfectly suited for incremental development.  You might have noticed mobile applications, too, push frequent releases to smartphones.  The idle are left behind.

GreenWizard’s Heartbeat

GreenWizard releases new software every two weeks like clockwork.  It is the heartbeat of the organization and everyone is in tune with it, including our customers.  Feedback from a customer on Monday can be online and available for use the following Friday.

Currently, GreenWizard is deepening electronic integration with LEED Online and allowing 0ur customers to push information to USGBC.  Every two weeks a new integration feature is deployed.  Customers are not waiting an entire year for integration, they are receiving it steadily over time.

From the Fall of 2009 through today, GreenWizard has released 77 versions of our software with the 78th being released tonight.  Early on, we released a new version every week.  As our product matured, we began releasing new functionality every two weeks.  That’s 26 versions a year and a 2 week turnaround time for new features requested by customers.

Architects, Engineers, Contractors, and Manufacturers — the core users of the GreenWizard platform — don’t care about the nuanced differences between software development lifecycles.  They care about having their feedback heard and seeing their requested features come online quickly.  The engineering team at GreenWizard is able to respond quickly to their requests precisely because we’ve chosen a lifecycle geared towards rapid innovation and customer satisfaction.

So what’s on deck this week?

More LEED Online integration with a focus on PI3.  New LEED assessments including EAp2.  UI improvements around a user’s inbox.  Numerous bug fixes.

Stay tuned!  We’ll have new features available in just two weeks.