For a good short discussion of these development strategies see the book, Programming on Purpose: Software Design by Plauger ISBN 0137213743
In short when using Lisp it is often best to do top down design and bottom up development. Meaning design it. Then built the components. Test them. Then hook them together. The topics of this page include:
One way to make debugging easier is to avoid show stopping bugs before the bug becomes delocalized. You may use antibugging techniques to accomplish this objective.