The typical phased software development processes (aka waterfall, aka SDLC-Software Development Life Cycle) has phases:

1. Gather Requirements from the Customer
2. Analyze the problem
3. Design a solution
4. Write the code
5. Test
6. Deploy

It makes sense to build systems this way. Unfortunately, it also does not work.

What does?

Projects that DO use this process and (despite phases) complete successfully, actually add some process elements to the above.

These "Secret" process elements are the process that cannot be named. If they were named, everyone would see that the project did not actually use the 6 steps above. So successful projects need to have keep their real appraoch very hush hush. And not offend the Process-Police.

Why do phases inhibit success? What is involved in this "Secret Process"?
That'll be in the next post.