Finding the right tools for the right challenge The growing cost of most software development efforts can be traced back to one underlying cause – the lack of visibility into the software. As the size and system complexity grows for business critical applications — along with the complexity of sourcing environments — there is an increasing need for app owners, architects, and developers to truly understand their codebases. Without visibility into the implementation, it is hard for a developer to understand all the nuances of the code. This explains the disproportional amount of time that is needed for developers to identify the root cause of defects.
Tag Archives: Application Quality
Does code quality really help the business?
Most organizations have started to realize that code quality is an important root cause to many of their issues, whether it’s incident levels or time to value. The growing complexity of development environments in IT — the outsourcing, the required velocity, the introduction of Agile — have all raised the issue about code quality, sometimes to an executive level. Business applications have always been complex. You can go back to the 70s, even the 60s, and hear about systems that have millions of lines of code. But here’s the rub: In those days it was millions of lines of COBOL or some other language. But it was all one language. … Read More
Efficiency: The Need for Speed and Robustness
In today’s world, we expect everything to run efficiently. People do not have time to lose. One small efficiency improvement, when spread over many users, can lead to massive time and money savings. This also applies to your business applications. How much time would you and your company save if your business applications were more efficient? Probably much more than you think. But, in what forms can efficiency express itself? Well, for starters: Speed How many times have we not been upset by an application that does not start fast enough on our computers or on our smartphones? When a user faces this kind of annoyance, what happens? The company … Read More
Remediation cost versus risk level: Two sides of the same coin?
While working in a CISQ technical work group to propose the “best” quality model that would efficiently provide visibility on application quality (mostly to ensure their reliance, performance, and security), we discussed two approaches that would output exposure. The first is a remediation cost approach, which measures the distance to the required internal quality level. The other is a risk level approach, which estimates the impact internal quality issues can have on the business. Although both are based on the same raw data, the information differs when we identify situations that do not comply with some coding, structural, and architectural practices. The former approach will estimate the cost to fix … 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
Fast or Nimble? Agile Should be Both
I was watching the gymnastics competition at the Olympics on Sunday night and on more than one occasion heard commentators applaud competitors for their agility. As I watched these gymnasts move swiftly and with exacting precision across the beam, floor, vault and bars, I could not help but marvel at their abilities and at how appropriate a descriptor “agile” was for them. Long before businesses tossed around the term “Agile” as a method of technology project management, it stood as a word that often affixed to people and objects that displayed a certain set of characteristics. People earning the moniker “agile” almost invariably were both fast and nimble – not … Read More
Mozzilla Thinks Crashes are a GOOD Thing…Really?
My six-year-old can tie her own shoes. I honestly did not realize how big of a deal that was until her teacher told me a few months ago that she had, for a short time, become the designated shoe tier in her classroom. Apparently, thanks to the advent of Velcro closures for kids’ shoes, nobody else in her kindergarten class knew how to tie their shoes. The problem with being a “star” of your kindergarten class, however, is that all the kids want their shoes tied by her. As a result, she was trying to tie shoes very fast – too fast, in fact – and started making mistakes, which … Read More