12.4 Project Management Tools | Managing Software Deliverables: A Software Development Management Methodology

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Most carpenters find a good hammer and use it for many years. They generally do not evaluate their hammer every six months and compare it with newer hammers or different brands of hammers. They seldom have any need to pilot the use of a different brand of hammer. They generally use the hammer they have for as long as it reliably does the job they bought it to do. My point is that the use of a particular project management tool is not a significant factor to success. The use of any software tool should be based on criteria related to business objectives. For me, selection of a given software tool is based on the following key criteria:

Is the tool considered a de facto standard that other tool vendors compare themselves to?
Is the tool already in widespread use in the organization?
If it is not currently used, is the expense of introducing the tool justified?
Will the tool significantly enhance productivity? How?
Will use of this tool allow the interchange of data between teams, units, and vendors?

Many other criteria can be applied to the tool selection process, but the answers to these questions are gating factors in my book. If these questions can all be answered with a yes, then I am most likely to be receptive to using the tool. A no answer for any one of these questions usually becomes a showstopper. In cases where no tool is present, the answers to these questions, for each product evaluated, will help you decide what is best for your business. It is quite common to create a decision matrix and evaluate several vendor products against these criteria before making a decision.

To put things into proper perspective, a press release from the NIST is reprinted below[19]. The NIST is a nonregulatory agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Technology Administration that develops and promotes measurement, standards, and technology to enhance productiv-

ity, facilitate trade, and improve the quality of life. What follows is a truly staggering report of the loss of money resulting from software errors. This only emphasizes the absolute need for an organization to use the SPMO to establish order and structure in its development processes. The full text of the press release follows:

  Software Errors Cost U.S. Economy $59.5 Billion Annually    NIST Assesses Technical Needs of Industry to Improve Software- Testing    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:    June 28, 2002    Contacts: Michael Newman    (301) 975-3025    NIST 2002-10    Software bugs, or errors, are so prevalent and so detrimen- tal that they cost the U.S. economy an estimated $59.5 bil- lion annually, or about 0.6 percent of the gross domestic  product, according to a newly released study commissioned  by the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Stan- dards and Technology (NIST). At the national level, over  half of the costs are borne by software users and the  remainder by software developers/vendors.    The study also found that, although all errors cannot be  removed, more than a third of these costs, or an estimated  $22.2 billion, could be eliminated by an improved testing  infrastructure that enables earlier and more effective  identification and removal of software defects. These are  the savings associated with finding an increased percentage  (but not 100 percent) of errors closer to the development  stages in which they are introduced. Currently, over half  of all errors are not found until "downstream" in the  development process or during post-sale software use.

NIST funded the study, which was conducted by the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) in North Carolina, as part of a joint planning process with industry to help identify and assess technical needs that would improve software-testing capabilities. Findings of the 309-page report are intended to identify the infrastructure needs that NIST can meet through its research programs.

  "The impact of software errors is enormous because vir- tually every business in the United States now depends on  software for the development, production, distribution, and  after-sales support of products and services," said NIST  Director Arden Bement. "Innovations in fields ranging from  robotic manufacturing to nanotechnology and human genetics  research have been enabled by low-cost computational and  control capabilities supplied by computers and software."    In 2000, total sales of software reached approximately  $180 billion, supported by a large workforce encompassing  697,000 software engineers and 585,000 computer program- mers.

Software is error-ridden in part because of its growing complexity. The size of software products is no longer measured in thousands of lines of code, but in millions. Software developers already spend approximately 80 percent of development costs on identifying and correcting defects, and yet few products of any type other than software are shipped with such high levels of errors. Other factors contributing to quality problems include marketing strategies, limited liability by software vendors, and decreasing returns on testing and debugging, according to the study. At the core of these issues is difficulty in defining and measuring software quality.

The increasing complexity of software, along with a decreasing average product life expectancy, has increased the economic costs of errors. The catastrophic impacts of some failures are well-known. For example, a software failure interrupted the New York Mercantile Exchange and telephone service to several East Coast cities in February 1998. But high-profile incidents are only the tip of a pervasive pattern that software developers and users agree is causing substantial economic losses.

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