Lifecycle
It is important to choose the appropriate development lifecycle for a given project because all other activities are derived from this process. A couple of examples of this are the Rational Unified Process (RUP) and the eXtreme Programming (XP) methods. Having a well-defined process is usually better than having none at all, and in many cases it is less important what process is used than how well it is executed. The methodologies above are very common and a quick Web search will turn up all kinds of information regarding how to implement them.
Read more about this topic: Best Coding Practices