The Lone Eagle is a one-person development team. The Lone Eagle wears "all the hats" during the software development project. The Lone Eagle may use 4GL tools (ie. Visual Basic, Delphi, PowerBuilder) to rapidly design and develop small scale, desktop-based interactive, typically database applications that are used by a relatively small group of people. A one-person project doesn't produce a literally mission-critical system in which life or limb is dependent. But these days, many organizations rely on one person, the computer guy or girl, to build and maintain their business lifeline - their technology solution.
One person, and probably a stream of them.
The Goal of the Lone Eagle is to Develop a Quality Package, within Budget and On Time
The Lone Eagle must realize that there is more to professional software development than just writing code. The Lone Eagle must create software that interact graciously and efficiently with end users in their business environment. The package must include the artifacts produced by that of a professional software engineer.
The whole "package": executables, reports, design and rationale documents, training and training materials, on-line or paper-based help facilities, and maybe even the source code. It is more than a handful of diskettes with zipped-up files that's "the code".
The package must be completed within the stated budget. This means working with the tools that are available when there is no money to buy "better" tools that may do the job quicker or more efficiently.
The package must be designed, developed and delivered on time. More often then not, the project completion date is decided for you, usually due to factors that have nothing to do with calculated design and development time.
Solitary Application Developers: A Review of Their Professional Issues
An Application Development Methodology for the Lone Eagle Software Developer
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