Why Focus On Software Development Performance?
As software permeates every aspect of our daily lives, more software is needed to support our society’s ever increasing needs. For the manager or executive overseeing software-heavy projects: it is easy to feel overwhelmed. Missed commitments, defective software releases, and almost never ending user satisfaction issues seem to be the norm. To move ahead of your competition you must help your software team understand what they do and how they do it. Once they understand their software development performance, they will be able to improve their performance to unprecedented levels. Your profits will follow.
If you feel overwhelmed by your software development concerns, you are not alone. Study after study points out that the vast majority of software projects are late and/or over budget. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Problems. Almost every software organization has one or more of these problems:
- Missed commitments,
- Missed opportunities,
- Defective software releases,
- Low customer satisfaction,
- Economic loss or low profits,
- High staff turnover,
- Low morale in the development team.
Solutions to these problems are available, but they may not be obvious. I believe that the cause of many of these problems is that most individuals and organizations don’t understand their software development performance.
Why is understanding your software development performance so important? Because if you do, you can make commitments that you can keep. If a developer can keep her commitments then her team can keep its commitments. In turn the organization can keep its commitments to the users and partners.
Evidence suggests that developer performance can vary by at least an order of magnitude. If you understand what factors influence software development performance then you can lead your developers at all levels of ability toward improved performance.
A wealth of experience. My over 16 years in the software industry give me the background to understand what problems managers and developers face. I have acted in many capacities (director, manager, team leader, individual contributor) and in many roles (software engineer, software process, quality, and usability specialist, user interface designer).
The tools that I use to assist software developers in discovering their performance are: personal interviews, coaching & mentoring, and a personal process class. During the class the developers write 10 short programs and 2 reports. They learn how to collect and analyze data on their performance.
When developers understand intuitively, and through numbers the way they work, then they become prepared to devise ways to improve their performance. At that point they may realize that they need more design training, or a specific language training, etc. Whatever the case may be, from that point on the developer is ready to make the necessary steps to move on and up in the performance curve taking her team and your organization with her.
Next Steps. Please call or send email to the address below to setup an appointment to see how You and I could work together to make your organization even more successful.
I am looking forward to working with You!
Call (512) 775-7864 or send email to teleki@acm.org to setup a free, no-obligation appointment.