As a Software Developer, I started my journey in the Software Industry at Novell from where I moved to Citrix and later to Amazon. Being in this industry for close to 6 years now, I have met and learnt from many wonderful intellectuals and have worked with them on various top class products that directly or indirectly impact billions of lives worldwide.

I have experienced diverse corporate cultures, working environments, software development practices and processes. During this journey where I accomplished some distinguished feats and also committed many silly mistakes, I have learnt lot of things of which I think some should be helpful and of interest to the aspiring Software Engineers. You may check out the points mentioned in the previous articles in this series. Here is another one-

Software Methodologies

You might have read about the software development methodologies in the boring Software Engineering class or book and if you are like me, would have definitely wondered at least once that if this subject was really necessary. They talked about different methodologies that can be followed to develop software which to me would appear quite similar.

In industry, I saw some of these models being applied in practice where I was a part of these processes. You need not worry about mugging up the definitions and all or be confused about which methodology to choose. A couple of them are used in practice and for you to start with having some knowledge of the processes should be more than sufficient. Ultimately, you must be able to deliver the deliverable on time, that's it.

The commonly used methodologies I have seen to be in use are Waterfall, Agile, CMMI and Iterative. Some people offer courses in these methodologies and may bug you with their offerings. In the companies I have worked, I am yet to find a person who can claim that taking such courses have dramatically added to their career growth.

My sincere suggestion to you would be to be just aware of these terms so that you don't look blank when someone mumbles this mumbo-jumbo. What actually matters is if you are making some progress every day and are able to complete a given task in time.
This is one of the things that I seriously think an aspiring Software Engineer should know. If you think some point should be added to this topic or some topic deserves to be added to this series, do post a comment and let me know. Keep watching for more. If you are keen on learning more about the better software development practices you can start following right from the college days, do get a copy of my first book "Hello World - Student to Software Professional" published by Partridge (A Penguin Random House Company). Now available worldwide on all the MAJOR ONLINE Stores - Amazon, Google Play, Flipkart, Barnes & Noble and many others.