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April 17, 2006
Permissible Defects?
An interesting thread came up on the IT Toolbox website www.ittoolbox.com on "Permissible Defects." The question had to do with acceptable industry thresholds for defects on SAP projects (as opposed to other classes of software work.)The reply from a gentleman based in the Netherlands warrants discussion. Here it is for your consideration. An interesting PDF paper that he wrote on Quality Assurance standards is here as well. It's got useful information on how software projects behave that can give understanding about reasonable expectations and commitments. Setting these expectations is the task of managers coming up with project estimates, hopefully using project estimation tools that can explore these in a "war games simulation".
Of course, my take on this is our observation at QSM of defects being directly a function of deadline pressure. Haste makes waste, as they say. But what is surprising from the research data (see the QSM IT Metrics Almanac posting) is how severe the trade-off is. If you try to compress dates without giving up on promised functionality, the defects can go up geometrically. For example, compressing the time by only 20% can yield a 4x or more rise in project defects, all of which have to be tested and corrected. As I've said in my articles, "Projects don't like to be time-compressed. They get very angry." more...
Posted by Mike at 11:49 AM | Comments (0) |
« I Wouldn't Be So Late If... (Part 2) | Main | Stainless Steel Screws in My Shoulder »March 22, 2006
2006 QSM Software Almanac - IT Metrics Edition
The 2006 QSM Software Almanac – IT Metrics Edition, is here! It contains more than 100 pages of analysis and observations that provide unparalleled access to the latest developments in the software industry.It's with great pride that we're announcing the Almanac here on the pages of Optimal Friction. My partners here at QSM have assembled overviews and in-depth analysis of more than 500 completed projects from all major industries, collected in the last 5 years. One can easily peruse the (sometimes surprising) qualities and characteristics of “best/worst in class” projects, with the attendant implications about core metrics tradeoffs. Best of all, it describes extensive actionable intelligence gathered over more than 25 years of consulting practice as revealed by the software industry’s most detailed and comprehensive database of completed projects using the analysis capabilities within the QSM SLIM Suite of tools.
Special thanks to Doug Putnam, Kate Armel, Don Beckett, and all on the QSM team. Readers of the Almanac will no doubt recognize the heritage of this work, tracing to Larry Putnam's pioneering research on metrics for the software and Information Technology fields. more...
Posted by Mike at 9:39 AM | Comments (0) |
« January 2006 Talk at the Boston SPIN | Main | Complexity Doesn't Scale »January 20, 2006
Agile Methods, Systems Theory, and “Mind-Blending”
In a recent article entitled “Complexity’s Rising Tide”, I talked about modern systems and software development being primarily about the “blending of minds” among IT professionals. I consider this idea at the heart of successful innovation in a tech-driven world, where the paramount challenge is to successfully build more complex systems under increasingly tight deadlines. Many are looking to agile methods as a way to accelerate their cycle time given the pressures that they’re facing.To me, mind-blending is the essence of knowledge work, which many technologists consider software development to be. However, if you take this idea further and want to understand why agile methods can reduce defects and thereby shorten schedules, then it helps to appreciate concepts like cybernetics and systems theory. Systems theory (a modern synonym for cybernetics) can be seen at many intersections within the agile development philosophy. more...
Posted by Mike at 9:25 AM | Comments (0) |
« Peter O'Farrell 1946 - 2005 | Main | Agile Methods, Systems Theory, and “Mind-Blending” »January 6, 2006
January 2006 Talk at the Boston SPIN
On Tuesday, January 17th 2006, I'll be giving this talk at the Boston SPIN. One theme is about what happens when you violate "Rifkin's Laws" - just one of the dynamics described here in Optimal Friction.com. If you'd like to come, you can get directions here.Excess Friction: How Fast Deadlines Can Slow You Down and Ruin Your Life
Description: For those of us in the software field, high-pressure deadlines are a fact of life. In this environment - to build more and more in less and less time - there is a never ending push for higher productivity and faster schedules. However, statistics show that there are, in fact, conditions where harsh deadlines actually cause lower productivity, longer schedules, and high conflict amongst a team - the exact opposite of what we're trying to achieve.
In this talk, Michael Mah will talk about "the cult of speed" and how overcoming this challenge is critical to the modern-day IT organization. He will address how software managers can more effectively manage the high-tension pressures of work life in the Information Age, while maximizing chances for project success. more...
Posted by Mike at 4:49 AM | Comments (0) |
« Partisan Perceptions and Ingo Gunther’s Globes | Main | Creativity, Exercise, Music, and Brain Power »December 1, 2005
Complexity's Rising Tide
Recently, I had the privilege of being a guest keynote speaker at symposiums for two of the world’s largest financial services companies, where I spoke about the people dynamics and success/failure trends of deadline-intensive projects – something near and dear to all our hearts. Between the two events (one held in Chicago and the other in Boston), there were about 700 technology professionals in the audiences. It was an exciting time.Something struck me that both organizations had in common, which was touched upon in the opening remarks by senior executives who introduced me to their audiences. The paramount challenge before them -- more often than not -- stemmed from being a global company with geographically dispersed teams, dealing with the rising complexity of technology projects, while under higher pressure of ever-tighter deadlines.
This macro-challenge is one for the ages. It is especially daunting in today’s Information Age, because being a company that only uses technology as a peripheral aspect of its core business is an outdated paradigm. As a banking executive once told me, “We’re not a financial services company where we simply use IT. Today, more than ever, we’re discovering that we must be a TECHNOLOGY company that happens to be in the financial services business.” more...
Posted by Mike at 1:05 PM | Comments (0) |
« Yochai Benkler of Yale on Open Source Collaboration | Main | Fortune 500 Executives Reconsider 24/7 »November 6, 2005
Tom Demarco and Impossible Zones
Recently, I had a wonderful dinner, one-on-one, with a mentor I am most fond of, Tom Demarco, at his lovely home on the coast of Maine. Yes, Tom's of Maine (different Tom). When I visit Tom, I playfully call him "Godfather".
Tom, as many people know, has written several fabulous books on technology. In fact, one of his first books, Controlling Software Projects, was among the first to describe the statistical existence of what Larry Putnam called "The Impossible Zone". It is the absolute limit beyond which projects simply have not gone any faster. Tom described the first time he saw a graph of projects, where the edge of the zone - and beyond - was delineated. He came to the conclusion that at the time, he had spent most of his professional life living in the Impossible Zone.
I find that many senior managers will have none of this talk about projects being "impossible". That would wake up their tired, huddled masses to the realities of unrealistic deadlines and corporate denial. So I don't say that this area is the Impossible Zone.
I say that when you look at a graph of real, factual, historical data, the zone is simply - "Where No Project Has Ever Gone Before", in Star Trek terms. In many of my speeches, I ask audiences, "How many of you are given a project deadline first, before anything else?" All the hands go up. I then ask, "If your deadlines were plotted on this chart, how many believe they might be in the Impossible Zone?" All the hands stay up. Tom still has a lot of company.
more...
Posted by Mike at 7:14 AM | Comments (0) |
« "Agile Metrics" at SD Best Practices Conference - Boston | Main | POPTech in beautiful Camden Maine »October 4, 2005
Outsourcing as Social Transformation
One of the subjects in Optimal Friction (the book), will be about relationship management, with the notion that healthy work relationships bring about better outcomes – not only on projects, but also between people, teams, groups, and companies. If you believe the adage, “Work is the place where we play out the energy of our relationships,” then you might view work as a sandbox of sorts, where the interplay and dynamics between people have a stage theater to play themselves out.With that, I just received an interesting book from my hosts at the POPTech Conference in Camden, Maine. (POPTech was conceived by John Scully (former CEO of Pepsico and Apple) and Bob Metcalfe (inventor of the Ethernet, and founder of 3Com), among others. Once I asked John if POPTech was really created by him and Bob as a way to get his friends to come to Camden, and he replied, “That’s about right.”)
Anyway, back to the book – it’s “Maximum City, Bombay Lost and Found”, by Suketu Mehta, a speaker at this year’s conference. According to the POPTech cover letter, it was short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize and named Book of the Year by the Economist. It tells gripping stories of a city transformed by the pressures of globalization and struggling under the weight of massive growth and huge divisions between rich and poor. It’s remarkable that, before one of the seminal technology conferences in the U.S., I am receiving a book about life in India. more...
Posted by Mike at 9:13 PM | Comments (1) |
« Climbing El Capitan | Main | "Agile Metrics" at SD Best Practices Conference - Boston »September 26, 2005
In Praise of Slowness
"We live in the age of speed. The world around us moves faster than ever before. We strain to be more efficient, to cram more into each minute, each hour, and each day. Since the Industrial Revolution shifted the world into high gear, the cult of speed has pushed us to a breaking point. Consider these facts: the average American spends seventy-two minutes of each day behind the wheel of a car; a typical business executive now loses sixty-eight hours a year to being put on hold; and American adults currently devote a meager half hour per week to making love." more...Posted by Mike at 11:35 AM | Comments (0) |
