Process Compliance Saves 15% of Development or Maintenance Costs
I had the opportunity to hear a brief on Computer Aid’s Tracer software and methodology. Tracer, when applied as recommended by CAI details all the process steps needed to accomplish every task and allows software personnel to entry time directly into the system as well as check off tasks completed. Tracer then show them what it takes to be compliant with processes. I believe if people started using something like Tracer they could actually get their CMMI type processes working and could achieve the 15 or more percent savings that Computer Aid themselves achieve. Amazing…. Simply by doing processes rather than giving them lip service: big savings and more successful projects. Applying Tracer to software projects can mitigate the issues of CMMI compliance. Of course CAI points out this doesn’t have to be CMMI.
Reducing Software Maintenance and Total Ownership Costs
Over 75% of the costs of software are in software maintenance. To address this I (Dan Galorath) participated in a best practices conference held by the IT Metrics & productivity Institute. I was fascinated by Herb Krasner’s presentation on software evolution versus software maintenance.
Herb defined software evolution as the set of activities, both technical and managerial, that ensures that software continues to meet organizational and business objectives in a cost effective way. He further defines evolutionary system types as either having an Imprecise statement of a real-world problem which generally changes over time or a system that becomes part of the world that it models/implement whose acceptance depends entirely on opinion and judgment. Evolutionary is in contrast with a maintenance system where the problem can be completely stated and where a change to the specification defines a new problem and a new system.
Herb Krasner , David Garmus, and Dan Galorath talks all illustrated how the use of metrics and management associated with measurement through both development and maintenance can reduce total ownership costs dramatically.
We then heard from Bob Lawhorn who spoke on how his company, Computer Aid Inc (CAI) actually saves organizations money and increases quality by taking over legacy system maintenance and support. It was one of the most inspiring illustrations on why we should do all this I ever saw. He spoke of taking over these systems with new hires, applying the CAI processes and measurement and reducing customer costs by around 30%. And they have been doing this for over 20 years.
Overall I came away inspired, seeing how software estimation, measurement, process, and real management of software like manufacturing is making a difference.
I will be presenting my talk on reducing total ownership costs several more times this year in partnership with CAI.
