Adam Buenz is a scarily clever guy;  if your into improving your development approach and work with SharePoint you have to spare a few minutes to read and digest this.

Quote:

The point I am trying to drive home is implementing an SDLC is not a nice-to-have thing on any SharePoint project, it is required. And while this may be the case, it does not discount the tried and true project metric harvesting methods that have been around since the dawn of man. While producing of client deliverables is always the focus, generating valid project metrics can both help to manage your project better, as well as make sure that iteration problems that you have in one project, don’t get repeated on another.

The Degradation of Empirical Software Development Management Techniques