Any advocate for better software quality knows that one of the biggest challenges is helping the CIO reach the CFO. When your team needs a budget for an important project, those conversations often break down. Thanks to the unavoidable technical complexity of IT, oftentimes the CIO might as well be speaking Esperanto to the CFO. When it comes to budgeting, IT might be the least-understood department in your organization. And what the CFO doesn’t understand, he doesn’t budget for. Instead, capital that should rightfully go towards IT growth and innovation is allocated to other groups and initiatives. That dulls the organization’s competitive edge, and can have a toxic effect on … Read More
Category Archives: Software Measurement
Android Application Failures Still Try Our Souls
Happy Independence Day everybody! I only hope those of you reading this on your Android device have not turned it sideways or performed some other seemingly innocuous action that has made this application fail. I say this because I recently read yet another blog about “workarounds” to compensate for application failures inherent in Android devices. These pieces have become almost ubiquitous over the past 18 months to the point where one would think Google would just go back and perform the structural quality analysis it needs to do to address the issues. Their failure to do so reminds me on this day before Independence Day of the opening lines of … Read More
Foretelling Facebook’s IPO Failure
I’m not one who believes in fortune tellers or those who claim to be able to predict the future. Heck, I don’t even read my horoscope and cringe whenever someone attempts to force it upon me. Only when my wife has attempted to read me my horoscope have I offered even as much as a polite “hmm.” Nevertheless there are many out there who swear by those who claim to be able to predict the future, especially in the financial industry. And while there were those who predicted a rocky road for Facebook’s IPO, it is doubtful that anybody could have foreseen NASDAQ’s technical melt down that surrounded the Facebook IPO. … Read More
Done Off-Site, Done Right
In 1807, French playwright Charles-Guillaume Étienne penned the famous line, “On n’est jamais si bien servi que par soi-même.” For those who do not speak French, you may recognize this now idiomatic phrase as the oft uttered, “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” Étienne’s words are a proclamation of self-reliance commensurate with the attitude of the French Revolutionary period during which he earned his acclaim; however, they are quite obviously not a hard and fast rule among businesses today. In today’s world, many companies that want “something done right” – including the development of software – look overseas for other companies to do it right for them. … Read More
Structural Quality Metrics in Outsourcing SLAs
When I speak to customers and prospects trying to incorporate static code analysis into their software development processes, one of the most common questions that I get is “How do we incorporate the outputs of static analysis into SLAS?” Given the prevalence of outsourcing in Fortune 500 and Global 1000 companies, this question is not surprising. Companies have always struggled to measure the quality of products being delivered, beyond the typical defect densities measured after the fact. To help organizations answer this and similar questions, I thought I would compile some frequently asked questions around introducing Structural Quality Metrics into SLAs. Before I get into the details, I want to caution … Read More
Gartner Webinar: Get Smart about Technical Debt
Over the past 10 years or so, it has been interesting to watch the metaphor of Technical Debt grow and evolve. Like most topics or issues in software development, there aren’t many concepts or practices that are fully embraced by the industry without some debate or controversy. Regardless of your personal thoughts on the topic, you must admit that the concept of Technical Debt seems to resonate strongly outside of development teams and has fueled the imagination of others to expound on the concept and include additional areas such as design debt or other metaphors. There are now a spate of resources dedicated to the topic including the industry aggregation … Read More
Hacking the Heart of the Matter
The issue of hacking in today’s society has gotten as serious as a heart attack – literally! In what seems like something that should be relegated to a bad action movie or the sinister deeds of some cartoon villain, researchers have demonstrated that hackers have the capability to send radio signals that could reprogram implantable medical devices, such as pacemakers or insulin pumps. Fortunately, there have been no actual cases of fiends roaming the streets striking dead people dependent upon pacemakers, but the mere fact that it is a possibility is frightening. I honestly do not think that in his worst nightmare, Wilson Greatbach, the inventor of the implantable pacemaker, … Read More