In this section of the site are articles dealing with both the theory and practice of parallel development.

Articles are assembled here based upon material I am developing on my blog under the category Parallel Development: theory and practice. You can think of these articles as more refined and organised version of those blog posting (and conversely you can think of the blog posts as my musings on the subject before I finally assemble these articles).

Introduction

Many people think that parallel development is a rare scenario that does not apply to them. These people are almost universally mistaken. Even a simple development, one consisting of support for an existing release while new features are being developed for the next release, is parallel development.

It may be that this parallel development is ignored (pretending it is not an issue) or bypassed (refusing to release support fixes until the next development release). These two approaches are, in turn, foolish and short sighted. Ignoring a problem simply means that you suffer the consequences and miss the opportunities its acknowledgement would bring. Bypassing the problem can cause customer dissatisfaction (who want to wait for the next development release to get a crucial bug fixed) and, once again, means that you are missing the opportunities that well managed parallel development affords.

With this in mind, these articles will provide you will the necessary information to confidently use parallel development and, just as importantly, know when it is appropriate to use.

Articles

Articles on the subject of Parallel Development: theory and practice are listed below.