Before the web, software had to be delivered on floppy disks or CDs. That meant that stability of the application was the most important factor in the software development process. The web flips that paradigm on its head and demands that flexibility be the most important factor in the software development process. This is because the web allows for the instantaneous update of the application for all users. That means that businesses can respond to the needs of their customers, partners, vendors, employees, and other stakeholders in near real-time – within a matter of hours. Not only that, but businesses are now free to re-prioritize application requirements, almost at will, and integrate new application requirements into the next software release in real-time.

Fluidity in web development

If software delivered on floppy disks or CDs was solid as a rock, then software delivered on the web can be as fluid as water. Sadly, most of the software development processes currently used to build web applications do not take the fact that web applications are inherently unstable into account. Most software development processes still make stability their primary objective, and in doing so limit their host business and it’s bottom-line. The best software development processes to use for building web applications are those that control instability and make flexibility their primary objective.

Control instability for maximum flexibility

Instability can be controlled and maximum flexibility achieved by using a software development process that focuses on componentization and standardization. Componentization allows for loose-coupling of parts of the application so that changing a part of the application has little to no effect on other parts of the application. Standardization brings order to what will inevitably be hundreds, or even thousands of components working in unison. This is called Atomic Web Development and you can read more about it in this article.