One of my favorite reads among tech bloggers is Dion Hinchcliffe over at ZDNet. I’ve followed his blogs for much of the last five years and whether I agree with him or not, I almost invariably find his points compelling and his willingness not to mince words refreshing; he even makes the occasional light bulb go off in my head. The most recent light bulb came when I read his blog on Enterprise App Stores and how the reception to them by their target audiences – namely enterprises – has been lukewarm at best. He notes: “…while enterprise app stores have now been launched in earnest from a wide variety … Read More
Output-Based Application Management
You need an application delivered fast. And you’re willing to pay more to get it done quickly. But how much more should you pay? That depends of course on your supplier’s productivity. The more productive they are, the more they can charge on a per-hour basis. That’s because their productivity enables them to deliver the same size application in fewer hours than a less productive supplier would be able to. Which means that the cost to deliver a function point (function point per $) might actually be less than a supplier whose labor rates are much lower! In other words, a supplier with a higher labor cost can actually be … Read More
ID’ing the Debt
Last fall, Gartner’s Andy Kyte issued a wake-up call about technical debt that was akin to a piano being dropped on the head of the IT industry. In estimating that technical debt – the cost to fix the structural quality problems in an application that, if left unfixed, put the business at serious risk – has already reached $500 billion globally and is fast on its way to exceeding $1 trillion by 2015, Kyte stirred up a hornet’s nest of activity around the topic. So far, much of the buzzing from those hornets has been in the form of continuing to discuss and expose the problem; we’ve seen plenty of … Read More
Measuring Quality & Security in Software
Bob Martin, a principal engineer at MITRE systems, returns in this week’s IT Software Quality Report to discuss the role of software managers in mission critical applications with CISQ Director, Dr. Bill Curtis. Learn the differences between measuring quality & security for physical products versus software. Bob tell us that when discussing “reliability” in software, one needs think about security and how someone might influence or degrade a system to do something that wasn’t anticipated or wanted. Listen to or download this episode now! CAST is a proud member of the Consortium for IT Software Quality (CISQ). As a member, we are committed to participating in the development of global … Read More
Going Gaga over Google
Talk about the ultimate case of “Buyer beware!” It was recently reported that within the next couple months the meteoric rise of Android Market is all but certain to overtake the iPhone App Store in terms of the number of applications offered. Taken on face value, this should come as little surprise to anyone. With the wide slate of devices on which Android can operate, its app store should have a much wider customer base than does iPhone, whose apps can run on only one type of device – the iPhone. Add to that the slowing of App Store downloads experienced by iPhone over the last few months – perhaps … Read More
Automated Analysis Amends Agile’s Ailments
Time to market is a major consideration when developing software these days. Feeling the pressure of competition, companies realize they need to move swiftly and cannot rest upon their laurels if they wish to remain ahead of the competition and be the company that sets the trend rather than follows it. But the pressure to produce software in short order can lead to software that is the quality of a food prepared by a short order cook – it might suit its purpose, but the quality is far from top-notch. Blessed with Agility To alleviate some of the pressures of producing software so fast, more and more companies – particularly … Read More
How Not To Do APM
A few weeks ago I moderated a webinar on Application Portfolio Management (APM) featuring Phil Murphy, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. It contains some excellent information on how to think about APM and I encourage you to download the presentation and the audio track. What follows are some thoughts about what I think is a fundamental misunderstanding of what APM is. In other words, how not to do APM. For starters, think about this question for a moment: What information about the portfolio do you need to make better decisions about Application A over here? Really. What exactly? If you know all there is to know about Application A, don’t … Read More