Improving Productivity By Reducing Rework
Bob Longhorn of CAI gave a masterful talk describing how the cost of rework can be killing software projects and how reducing rework could be the quickest way to improved productivity. Bob defined rework not as I normally do (redesign, reimplementation, retest of existing software to add functionality) but as the amount of churn, the rework of fixing things that were not done properly the first time in a development project. I believe Bob said many organizations have 30% of this rework and he saw at least 1 organization with 70% rework.
That says that improved processes and reviews could improve productivity by 30% just about all by themselves.
Even at Galorath I see rework at times that could have been avoided by reviews and verification that review changes were made. We all know it is many times less expensive to fix a problem up front than when the software is in test. Yes, we have processes, but sometimes that extra review just doesn’t happen due to perceived time constraints.
It is a shame so many organizations think they don’t have time for reviews. They don’t have time not to have them.
Bob says (correctly) that experimentation and prototyping are NOT rework. and that every deliverable should be inspected before declaring it complete. Quoting Bob “”Nothing Will Provide A More Significant Improvement in productivity Than Improved Quality”
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