Webinar Summary I had the pleasure of moderating a panel discussion with Bill Martorelli, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research Inc; Dr. Richard Mark Soley, Chairman and CEO of Object Management Group (OMG); Siva Ganesan, VP & Global Head of Assurance Services at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS); and Lev Lesokhin, EVP, Strategy & Market Development at CAST. We focused on industry trends, and specifically discussed how standardizing quality measures can have a big impact on reducing software risk. This interactive format allowed attendees to hear four distinct perspectives on the challenges and progress that is being made within organizations directly, and also at systems integrators. Mr. Martorelli started the discussion by … Read More
Category Archives: Software Measurement
The Holy Grail: Objective risk level estimation
In my last post we discussed the complimentary nature of remediation cost and risk level assessment. As a follow up, I wanted to dwell on the objective risk level assessment. Is it even possible? If not, how close to it can we get? How valuable is an estimation of the risk level? Could it be the Holy Grail of software analysis and measurement? Or is it even worth the effort? Risk level By definition, risk level is about the severity of the consequences of a situation and the probability for this situation to happen. A high-probability, low-impact situation can then “compete” with a low-probability, high-impact one for the riskiest situation … Read More
How to Build the Best Action Plan for your Application
Applications are built on thousands, millions, maybe even tens of millions, lines of code. They are based on specific architecture gathering technologies, frameworks, and databases set up with their own specific architecture. If you have an action plan to improve your application on a specific issue, what will be your strategy? Do you select one problem related to quality or take the opportunity to refactor part of your application? You know about issues coming from end users, but how do you address those inside the structure of your application? I remember meeting with development teams and management who were trying to find the root cause of performance issues, as delays … Read More
Risk Detection and Benchmarking — Feuding Brothers?
Risk detection is the most valid justification to the Software Analysis and Measurement activity: identify any threat that can negatively and severely impact the behavior of applications in operations as well as the application maintenance and development activity. “Most valid justification” sounds great, but it’s also quite difficult to manage. Few organizations keep track of software issues that originate from the software source code and architecture so that it is difficult to define objective target requirements that could support a “zero defects” approach. Without clear requirements, it is the best way to invest one’s time and resources in the wrong place: removing too few or too much non-compliant situation in … Read More
Cracking Open the Black Box of IT for CEOs
I spend some of my time with CEOs or CFOs, and time and again they tell me that IT is a black box that’s difficult, if not impossible, to measure. They can’t measure productivity. They can’t measure output. They can’t measure outcomes. They can’t measure risk. But, the thing they can measure is the IT cost. Just this week the CEO of a well-known financial services company told me: “I have 2,000 people working in IT with a budget of $200 million a year, and yet I have no idea how the development teams are doing in relation to the competition, or if I’m even getting my money’s worth. And … Read More
Crusty the Clown might know more than your development team does about software testing
Anybody reading this post probably thinks they know all they need to know about component-based development. But in my experience I have found that many organizations don’t when it comes to complete component testing. There is one crucial aspect of component-based development that is potentially damaging to your career and to your company. But before I go there, let’s rehash why development teams love component-based development. Component-based development is a rules-based approach to defining, implementing, and composing independent components into a software system. What do we get out of this? Well, we get higher reuse, because once it’s built, many of the components can be reused again and again and … Read More
3 Simple Tips to Maintaining a Rock-Solid Software Architecture
I have some good news and I have some bad news. First, the good news: Most smart development teams invest a lot of time designing a rock-solid architecture before the first line of code is even written for a new application. Now, the bad news: Once the architecture is designed, the conversation about it often ends. It’s built and then forgotten while the team runs off and builds the app, or when the application is transferred to a new development team. Thoughtfully designed architectures with solid design principles might begin to degrade almost the instant they are implemented. How can a team maintain a proper architecture, iteration after iteration? There’s … Read More