Feature Driven Development is another project management methodology that comes under the Agile family, which means it also follows an iterative and incremental development process. In this methodology, client requirements are presented as features that become the basis of product development. We can consider features such as user stories in the Scrum.

The following diagram explains the phases of the Feature Driven Development methodology:

Let's discuss these phases in more detail:

• Develop an Overall Model: In this phase, an overall model of the solution is prepared, which explains the high-level functionality of the solution. It does not provide all project details at this stage. This phase helps the team to understand the overall goal of the project.
• Build a Features' List: Once the overall model is ready and team members have an understanding of the project goal, all customer requirements are divided into features. In this phase, a features list is prepared, which is used as a basis for the whole project. Big features are divided into small manageable features that should not take more than 2 weeks to develop.
• Plan based on Feature: After having a complete features' list ready, planning for features, implementation starts. Planning is done for every feature, which involves different activities such as setting their priority, identifying risks, resource allocation, and identifying dependencies if there are any.
• Design by Feature: In this phase, the team starts working on the design of the features assigned to them. Design documents are created for features. Once the design is ready for the features, a property inspection is done to avoid any confusion during the development of these features.
• Build by Feature: Once the design phase is complete, teams start developing code based on the design documents. After this, code is tested for the feature. Once testing is completed, it is verified by the chief architect. After the approval of the chief architect, this feature is added to the mail build.

Following the preceding five simple phases, the Feature Driven Development methodology can be used for rapid product development. Not much time is spent initially discussing requirement details. Instead, the overall model is prepared to understand the high-level objectives of the project. However, this methodology can't be used with a small team as it requires an expert chief architect to lead the team and monitor all development and testing processes.