SWAT Development

Alex Iskold worte a great piece in Read/WriteWeb on The Future of Software Development.

You should read this and take your Application Development Manager to lunch to discuss it.

Many of the predictions at the end of the article are coming true. What we're finding at 5Rules is that it doesn't take an army to write a great application. It takes a small group of talented people, supported by great tools (PHP, Ruby) and a desire to create a better mousetrap, that can get things done far faster than a large contingent of developers.

There was a time when we all envied large development shops for their vast resources and endless capabilities. Nowadays, I just pity them. They're encumbered by their own weight and mired in endless (pointless?) design and development processes - a victim of their own size.

I think that Alex Iskold has it about right. The future will be comprised of small, highly productive teams, rapidly developing, deploying, modifying and redeploying applications to meet business demands. No longer will there be a tremendous advantage to more cheaper resources. The pendulum has swung. Smaller teams of local talent will be able to better define the application, and armed with libraries of PHP and Ruby code, will be able to rapidly prototype and deploy.

It will be the Age of SWAT application development.