APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT IS USUALLY faced with several critical factors: time to market, ever-increasing quality, and cost of development. Time to market is critical in that any project that an individual or company may have in mind is probably already in the works elsewhere. When that is the case, everything comes down to being the first to deliver . . . even if it falls short. A Gartner Research study showed that competing products offering similar features will take the most marÂ- ket share if released sooner. The study further added that the product released first, even with fewer features, typically builds market share faster. The lesson of that study is that it is important to release a 1. 0 version of a new product concept as quickly as possible and then follow up with feature add-ons over time. Product consistency and quality are also critical to the success of products making their debut. Applications with modules that look differently can underÂ- mine the application user’s confidence in the product. The lower their confidence in the application, the less they use the product and come to depend upon it. The same can be said at the code level. The more modules that are implemented conÂ- sistently, the easier different developers can step in to investigate and resolve problems. Cost of development is often measured by productivity, or how much code is created to accomplish specific application tasks.
