Formalizing the Software Development Life Cycle?

James asks: "My employer is a small consulting firm. Our owners have always tried to sell us as a solutions provider and tried to land project based contracts. Currently though our only truly successful business model is staff augmentation. I feel that our main failures in project based contracts is in our bidding and software development process. Our sales staff always seems to oversell our capabilities (not technically, time and money...I cannot squeeze 70 hours of work into one day). I want to better formalize our processes and was looking into the IEEE/EIA 12207 standard. Has anyone gone though the pains of formalizing to this extent their software development life cycle? If so, are there any tips, good resources to look to for insights?"

Comments

If I Could Shave Time in a Bottle . . .

[Dausha]

I cannot squeeze 70 hours of work into one day.

Lessee . . .

• Sleep four hours . . . 20 hours.
• Flush-o-Matic toilet/office chair (no trips to bathroom) . . . saves 30 minutes.
• Dominos . . . saves 30 minutes.
• One can hyper-caffinated, sugared beverage every four hours. . . doubles productivity.
• Reuse code from last client . . . doubles productivity.

I don't know about you, but I'm wondering what you're doing with the other ten hours of your day!