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Are all executives unethical?
Bob Marshall puts the moral case for Rightshifting organisations towards the high performance end of the spectrum.
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The Challenge
Nowadays, the profitability and yes, even the very survival of most technology organisations relies on the ability to consistently produce (or procure) software at an economic cost. Yet few such organisations ever give much thought to building and growing this ability.
Here’s a chart showing the distribution of technology organisations, according to their relative effectiveness at producing software:
The vertical axis shows the number of technology organisations, and the horizontal axis their performance. The (extremely small!) number of high performing organisations are on the far right of the scale – in fact, the best are off the end of the scale.
To meet the challenges of today’s business world takes
an organisational culture of continual performance
improvement. Those who understand this are in the high
performance region or taking active steps to move into
this space.
Contact rightshift@measuresw.com for more
information about how you can be a part of the tshift revolution.
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UNICOM Seminars
London, 12 November 2008
Measurement for Agile Projects
Why measure - how to measure - different approaches to measurement - using the software process to drive an Agile programme.
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Visible Metrics for Lean Management
London, 13 November 2008
Quantitative management for senior managers - Why and How.
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Practical Use of Function Point Analysis:
Special Offer:
£750 (GBP) £500 per person
30th/31st Oct 2008: Practical Use of IFPUG 4.2
4th/5th Nov 2008: Practical use of COSMIC v3
Introduction to CMMI® Plus
SEI authorised Introduction to the CMMI workshop plus 1-day Implementing the CMMI workshop.
£750 (GBP) - Central London
8th - 11th Dec 2008
For more information, contact
events@measuresw.com |
124 High Street,
Edenbridge Kent.
TN8 5AY
We are 30 miles south-east of London, and 15 miles from London Gatwick airport, with good rail and road connections. Local accommodation available.
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Knowledge-based management for Rightshifting performance
Sue Rule takes a critical look at the perceived barriers to improving performance.
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Beyond agility:
two opportunities to expand your knowledge of measurement for Agile projects and Lean management.
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SMS News
Report on the 15th Software Measurement & Improvement Forum
Sue Rule
Events
Software Measurement and Improvement Forum
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19th
February 2009
Issues with Estimating. |
The next SMIF will be on Thursday 19th February 2009 at Intellect, Russell Square London.
The programme of speakers will be announced shortly.
Attendance at SMIF is free, but must be registered in advance.
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SMS NEWS
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SMS is the only organisation that teaches what it practises as opposed to the mass of the other organisations that teach and do not practise.
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"COSMIC Training course participant feedback"
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Beyond
Agility
P. Grant Rule of SMS will be presenting two seminars as part of UNICOM’s Project Management series.
Measurement for Agile Projects, based on work by SMS Principal Consultant Peter Fagg with Systematic Software Engineering A/S, looks at how to use the software process to drive an Agile programme.
The workshop will cover different approaches to measurement, and why measures are important to Agile projects. It also gives practical guidance on how to measure.
Visible Metrics for Lean Management
Quantitative management for senior managers.
Lean management is about maximising the value delivered to customers by reducing waste and rework.
This workshop looks at what this means in terms of managing software projects, and how to align improvements in the software process to the delivery of value to the business.
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Software
Measurement and Improvement Forum: Metrics for
Improvement:
The Human Dimension
Thursday 2nd October 2008, Wragge & Co., 3 Waterhouse Square, Holborn
The premise of this SMIF was that “people are the most important part of what we do.” For organisational performance to improve, the goals of all staff and stakeholders need to be aligned towards that improvement.
However, all the individuals involved have different priorities, concerns and agendas which can conflict with the organisational strategy. SMIF speakers discussed different aspects of “keeping things on track”.
It is crucial to any improvement programme to have engagement and active sponsorship from the senior management. Steve Kingan (CEO, Nexor) looked at the role of management in empowering staff to change things for the better, and illustrated this with the approach to company growth taken by Nexor.
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As a customer-focused business committed to delivering quality solutions in the defence industry, Nexor cultivates a culture of continuous improvement.
A key factor of Nexor’s management approach is the “inverted hierarchy”, which places the customer-facing staff at the top, with the management and executive providing the support to enable them to deliver the best value to the customer.
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This is in contrast to the traditional top-down management structure.
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Jill Pritchet (Principal Consultant, SMS) drew on SMS case history to discuss how to engage middle management, and the project teams “at the coalface”, in embracing change.
It is not the case that middle managers will automatically implement new initiatives decided by senior management. Many people, and perhaps particularly those in the middle caught between the demands of senior management and the resistance of disengaged project teams, regard change with suspicion. Jill looked at some of the reasons for this resistance, which include:
- Limited resources - improvement is seen as an additional burden on an already over-stretched workforce.
- Too many changes - it is impossible to gauge the impact of one change before it is overtaken by another new initiative.
- History - “we tried it before and it didn’t work”
- Style of the organisation - there is a top-down management structure; company culture is resistant to change
- Underdeveloped Management skills - change is seen as a threat to familiar ways of working
There are many others. Senior Managers have to win over both middle management and key staff to embrace new initiatives. Project Managers who can see the benefits in the working environment and the performance of their project teams need to influence middle managers to become champions of improvement.
It is the “soft skills” that are required to engender a change culture - people management, and communication.
Communication was a key word of the day.
Communicating data - measurement - was the focus of Graham Collins’ presentation, looking at how to align goals and metrics to achieve the desired outcome.
He referred to the current crisis in the financial market, to illustrate the connection between goals, metrics and behaviour. If the stated goal of a financial institution is “to become the leading mortgage-provider”, success is measured against this goal, and this in turn drives behaviour. The only game in town becomes to sell more mortgages; prudent evaluation of the associated risk is not rewarded. So “becoming the leading mortgage-provider” is not an objective likely to encourage a prudent approach to banking.
Thus, it is crucial to define a goal which really sums up the organisation’s desired outcome.
A valuable approach to aligning goals and metrics is the Goal- Question-Metric approach. An appropriate range of metrics is also required to give a complete picture. Measurements have traditionally included lines of code; more recent techniques such as function point counting give a better indication of size and complexity. There is an argument from the proponents of Agile development that a move to working software is perhaps one of the best measures of progress.
However, this is only a measure of production, not a measure of the business value delivered. The key issue with agile project management is to continually assess with the client the most important work that should be done. Developers tend not to take an interest in business value, benefits realisation or return on investment, and tend to work on a small number of requirements and change requests at any one time.
Graham’s presentation demonstrated some of the complexities of measuring the value delivered by software, and selecting the right metrics to encourage focus on delivering value.
Peter Hall’s talk on “Contracting your way to a better relationship“ demonstrated the limitations of outsourcing contracts in defining and delivering value from software suppliers. Lawyers like certainty and detail, whereas software projects and outsourcing relationships are uncertain, complex and constantly changing. IT people don’t like spending their precious time on contracts, with the result that the contracts often don’t contain what they need to.
The contract process is useful if the business is engaged in drawing up the terms of the partnership, rather than “leaving it to the lawyers.” This means treating the contract process as a scoping exercise and a means of testing assumptions and removing areas of possible dispute.
Those who think IT projects never end in litigation should refer to newspaper headlines citing a current claim for £700m over a failed CRM system. The court case has been going on for six months and involved legal costs of £45m to date. This sorry tale is yet to be concluded.
If businesses changed entrenched attitudes towards contracts and began to regard them as a living project/relationship document, it enables proper management of the outsourcing partnership focused on delivery of value.
Analysing some common issues and problems which arise in practice for those trying to deliver software process improvement, there was agreement that the “human dimension” is a key factor. People are the means of getting the tasks done, and the means of turning around a company culture.
There are no easy answers to issues of communication and engagement, but those really committed to improving performance are continually working on better ways of achieving the right results. SMIF is pleased to have contributed to this essential dialogue.
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Copyright (c) Software Measurement Services Ltd 2008. All rights
reserved. |
s.rule@measuresw.com