Who Needs Standardized Spelling
A good friend and well meaning associate recently suggested that with my lousy typing and miserable spelling and grammar that I should have BLOG entries edited before going live. While I question the need for standardized spelling (not really but this sounds better than “I can’t spell”) I believe that would be the end of the stream of conscious, any topic (within scope) goes BLOG. I don’t want to deal with people editing, changing meaning, with time delays and generally losing control.
So, I will continue to BLOG on-line. My apologies for spelling and grammar errors. BLOGS happen any time, day or night, and the blog software’s spelling checker is nearly unusable.
I do, however, appreciate when someone tells me of my misdeed and do go back and clean up BLOG entries when I hear of typos.
Development Intelligence
How I love that phrase “Development Intelligence”, patterned after business intelligence. Unfortunately it appears Borland has got a lock on that phrase.
But the concept of continuous measurement and the ability to use metrics to proactively manage and monitor a software development project is so valuable.
I was recently discussing an automated QA tool with someone who had looked at it. It had several hundred rules for quality software. It even used McCabe’s complexity metric. Those were good things. Only problem is they run it at the end of a project, not during, for example when a single programmer’s work is being checked in or even before when something can still be done be done about quality issues. Congratulations, the 4000 function point application you just took ownership of violates 117 quality rules. What do I do with that except negotiate in an outsource environment.
But continuous Development Intelligence. Imagine, a developer skips a standard, or whose code is on immediately understandable… And ti getting flagged before check-in. The vast majority of developers want to do a good job and a tool that helps them find and catch quality errors sounds like a significant total ownership cost improvement.
Barriors to Adopting Estimation Technology & Applications
A reader requested I chime in on The biggest barriers I see to adopting estimation technologies and tools. So here goes the first draft.
- Not Invented Here: Some people think that their environment is so unique that it cant be estimated… or that estimation applications like SEER can’t handle their unique scenarios. I have never seen a case where this was true once the organization tried. Or sometimes an expert has their own spreadsheet and they don’t want to let go of that control.
- Don’t Want To Know: Sometimes the answers from estimation technology are longer or more costly than stakeholders want to hear. Read more
Pairwise Comparisons Use In Estimation and Decision Making
I first became aquanted with Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) in the mid ’80s when a professor from Penn State offered up the technique for estimating size. We then did some joint work on AHP for software sizing. Read more
Quality Assurance As The Scapegoat.. And Putting Quality In The Hands of Developers
I was at a best practices seminar in Toronto today. Great talks. But the most interesting talk was about the issues of quality assurance. Some (perhaps many) organizations have quality assurance teams that are junior personnel, who are unable to evaluate software, but can only follow checklists. Then when the software is fielded and has problems people blame QA. If there is a quality management function (that is quality evaluating requirements, design, code, test) there is the ability to make better products. But just checklist people during testing don’t cut it.
Also, even if QA reports to management that the software is not of sufficient quality, and the first time management hears this is two weeks before shipment that the software is not of adequate quality and should be deployed, what is management supposed to do? Hold off? Rewrite. This approach isn’t going to increase quality or reduce total ownership costs.
One of the excellent techniques that has provided success to many projects is to have checklists for each software activity.. Then have the developers themselves ensure they are meeting the quality requirements. Quality management need only audit one in four items. And putting th definition of quality in the hands of those who actual create quality increases quality without increasing costs.
Just What the World Needs… Another “free” Browser… Costs Industry Big Bucks
I admit I used Firefox until Microsoft’s latest, tabbed browser. At that time the tabs made a lot of browsing easier. And I ran IE when things didn’t work right with Firefox. That was a long time ago. I now use IE exclusively. No significant reason to use another browser. But now we have Opera, Fire Fox, Internet Explorer, and the new Google browser. I suppose this is, in some ways analogous to having different java environments (something I try to avoid) or multiple versions or .net for different applications. Thankfully I believe the majority of businesses have standardized on Internet Explorer. But what is the cost of testing software on a myriad of browsers? And keeping up the latest versions of browsers. How many SAAS systems stop working because the browser the user is interacting with just got “better” This certainly adds the test time that another version of a local OS does (groan… I hate to see developers testing for windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista (home and professional) and on and on.
PS It is important to distinguish between browsers used as the infrastructure for business applications versus people web browsing. Hopefully organizations have some limitations on people “surfing” the web. And getting involved with unsavory sites. Perhaps those surfers need more consumer based surfing features.
Banking and Mergers and IT… Oh My
Watching the chaos going on in the economy, the overnight mergers, the bankruptcies, and other tragedies in the US and in the world makes me shiver thinking about how all these IT systems are going to work together, or work at all. I heard that the value in some of these organizations is their IT infrastructure (we have said for years that banks are big IT companies with money as their product…. this bears it out) This is the time when SEER for Software and SEER for IT can really help save the day with project and operations planning in this consolidation environment.
Understand the costs of data conversion, how many help desk people will be needed to support the newer, bigger organization, how to dispose of unneeded assets. And having open eyes of the cost and schedule risks are essential.
I saw an article today stating that the current economic issues have stalled 2009 IT planning. This is not the time for stalling. This is the time for increased planning and risk management. I realize stalling buys time to see how things shake out. But planning for alternate scenarios can be extremely effective as well.
Increasing IT Infrastructure Costs Reducing Ability To Change Business
With IT infrastructure costs increasing so dramatically the ability of IT to change the business and provide value is diminishing. Some recent systems I have seen have had over 90% of the costs dedicated to IT infrastructure and IT supporting services. The overall goal of IT should be to provide business value. Yet with these costs it is difficult to gain credibility around the opportunities to improve business. I read an interesting paper from Tata consulting that included a chart from Howard Rubin showing the growth of infrastructure and the shrinking of applications. Truly the value of IT is to improve business processes and increase earnings to the corporation. Yet in so many organizations IT is just a cost center. The Tata paper touches of methods of refocusing IT on proving business value.
Quoted in CIO Update
Dan was quoted by CIOUpdate editor Robert McGarvey in his article “The Six Winning Secrets of Project Funding”: http://www.cioupdate.com/budgets/article.php/3765086
This article discusses credibility and business value as keys to getting funding today.
The Business Value Of IT Book
I opened my copy of this book, The Business Value of IT, by Mike Harris of DCG, David Herron and Iwknicki Stasia doing some research and I must say I enjoy this book every time I look through it. It covers how t maximize value in the short, medium and long term.
Great discussion on metrics. And the simple things which, if done well, will make IT a profit rather than a cost. They actually teach classes at our facility on occasion. I think i will slip in next time they discuss IT Value.
I am also fascinated by SEER’s ability to estimate value in addition to cost for IT, software, and other areas. Good work SEER development team.
