Application development infrastructures come in all shapes and sizes. They can range from one developer with a mainframe coding in RPG to hundreds of developers coding in different programming languages on multiple hardware platforms. Regardless of the size or complexity of the development infrastructure, every IT shop that develops software should start with these five simple rules.

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1. First things first: get a development process model. It makes no sense attempting to create a robust development infrastructure without first having a development process. Fortunately, this step is fairly easy because there are already many tried and true development process models in use. Newcomers to formal application development can adopt a development process model once they are adequately trained in its usage. Suitable development process models for beginners include the traditional waterfall process model, Rapid Application Development (RAD), the Spiral Model and the Agile Development model.