I agree that seems kind of stiff, especially for a smaller company that is developing for the web. Getting Real is a quick (and free to read online) book by 37s

I agree that seems kind of stiff, especially for a smaller company that is developing for the web. Getting Real is a quick (and free to read online) book by 37signals that helps focus on a very light development process http://getreal.37signals.com/ http://getreal.37signals.com/ . Reading it might give you some material for suggesting ways to improve your company's workflow (and coming from a fairly credible source). Many web startups have come to resemble the open source development pattern: release early, release often, don't plan too far into the future (your assumptions will probably change by then). I think these are all good ideas: you get feedback sooner from real users, which allows you to focus on providing functionality that your users actually want (or at least think they want). In general I think the extreme programming propaganda has a lot of good advice, but I don't know if any large companies have successfully applied them to teams of more than 10-20 people.