| The complexity assessment is performed to help successfully introduce complexity reduction into a corporation. The purposes of the complexity assessment are as follows: -
Evaluate a corporation's current complexity strategy and the implementation of that strategy in current software projects and various systems groups. -
Use the results of the assessment to determine a corporation's complexity goals, elements of a complexity program to achieve those goals, and domains in which to focus complexity efforts. -
Recommend actions to take to implement its complexity strategy. Instituting the practice of complexity reduction across a corporation is a large, complex task in itself, especially if the ultimate goal is to practice complexity reduction practices above the project level—that is, across teams, across product lines, and across software groups/organizations. Success requires careful planning, cooperation, and good management practices. To ensure success, a corporation needs to determine how ready, willing, and able it is to practice a complexity-reduction-driven development approach and what actions it needs to take to prepare itself to accomplish its complexity objectives and goals. The assessment will investigate both technical and management/organizational complexity issues. On the technical side, some important issues include: -
Identifying and defining core business objects and other kinds of components. -
Defining guidelines and standards for core business objects (once they exist) and for creating or re-engineering core business objects. -
Defining the organizational structure and classification scheme for the complexity library or libraries. On the management/organizational side, issues include: -
Defining personnel support for core business objects/components. -
Establishing complexity training programs. -
Establishing the complexity measurement infrastructure (i.e., complexity metrics and measurements, corporate complexity policy, complexity incentives). |
