To get the best results, Strategy and Planning stages should typically be carried out during the Architecture and Design and System Requirements stages. The old Alan Lakein adage ‘failing to plan is planning to fail’ (actually ripped off from an earlier quote by Benjamin Disraeli) in many cases applied to projects we have seen that required urgent and/or expensive remedial attention.

Plan to integrate SPE into your software development process and project schedule.

To be effective, SPE should not be an "add-on;" it should be an integral part of the way in which you approach software development. Integrating SPE into the software process avoids:

• Over-reliance on individuals: important tasks are frequently forgotten when key individuals move to a different  project or leave the company.

• SPE failure: When projects fall behind, SPE activities are often omitted leading to failure.

Engage Fastwerkz in early project stages to carry out the activities in the table below.

Profiling and Optimisation stages are carried once development has reached a point where testing has started, when projects have (unfortunately) already started to show signs of failing or when a production system is simply not meeting critical non functional performance KPI’s. Refer to our Case studies to get a better appreciation of what SPE can do in the latter two circumstances.

But our advice is not to wait until things are failing to introduce SPE into your project.