Pitfalls of Software Development:What Every Executive should Know

Marie Josée (MJ) Drouin @ VSF

09/10/07

mjdrouin@gmail.com

Who am I?

• Director with 15 years of Media experience, I lead technical teams of up

to 30 people and 3 managers to deliver most aspects of the business -

Operations, Customer Services, Information Technologies, Project

Management, Engineering, and Procurement. I developed expertise in

managing cable, wireless, satellite, transmission, engineering and

software development. I worked at Bell, Teleglobe, Intelsat, CBC and

as a expert consultant.

• Professional Engineer, Masters in Technological Management, ITIL

foundation, PMP

• I have extensive experience in speaking since the 90's (ouf!), subjects

were always a mix of technologies, commerce and management.

• Past engagements were: 8 weeks on Twitter: I love it! (2009), The

Future of Broadcast Archive Systems (2008), DVB-H: Video over IP

goes Wireless (2006), HDTV distribution (2005), Video over IP (2004)

and, Several broadcast technical training (1994-1998): Video 101,

Digital Video and Compression 201, Video testing techniques 301.

• http://www.linkedin.com/in/mjdrouin

• http://twitter.com/mjdrouin

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Pitfalls of Software Development?

1. Requirements

2. Costing

3. Technology

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Software is everywhere

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Standish Group – Software Projects

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Pitfalls of Software Development?

1. Requirements

2. Costing

3. Technology

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Requirements: What do you need?

1. Power users

2. Priority management

3. Plan releases

4. Links to other systems

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Access to power users

• From the start

• Throughout the project

• Participate to discovery &

concept design

• Improve creativity as a

member of the team

Secret:

• Spot-check and regularity

• Team

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Waste: Building what you don’t need

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Source: Standish Group

Study of 2000 projects at

1000 companies

Usage of Features and

Functions in Typical

System

Priority Management

• Business Value vs Development Efforts

• Feature sets

• Focus: Start Small

• Incremental development

Secrets:

• Data entry features

• Functionalities – core business

• Reports and retro-action features, afterward

• Avoid hard-coded processes

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Release Management

• Start small, choose only major features

• Redo priority before each release

• Keep a living list of desirable features

• Can’t know what you’ll need

• By using it, users will find

new features

Secret:

• Don’t just replace what you have

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Links to other Systems

• Web services

• API

• Shared dB

Secret:

• Business team need to think of their

data and links between them

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Pitfalls of Software Development?

1. Requirements

2. Costing

3. Technology

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Costing

1. Easy evaluation: Cost units

2. Knowledge Bases

3. Cost risk factors

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Cost Units

• Every aspects of every feature

• Every screen

• Every click for every System involved

+ a % for:

• Analysis, specifications, design

• Planning, PM

• Test, test, test

• Implementation

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KNOWLEDGE BASES

Cone of uncertainty

Defect cost increase

Cocomo

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Cone of Uncertainty

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Defect cost increase

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Cocomo II

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Cost Risk Factors

• Team quality, experience and discipline

• Software development best practices

• Business targets ≠ estimates

• Rewrite code = 100% cost increase

• Planning and Risk Management: Plan for

rework and monitor it

• Focus on quality and costs rather than

schedule

• Licence agreements

Secret: Other systems!

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Pitfalls of Software Development?

1. Requirements

2. Costing

3. Technology

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Technology

1. Technology debt

2. Human factors

3. New trends

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Technology Debt

• Teams skills

–Coding language experience

–Maintenance and operations

• Stability and complexity of

ancillary systems

• Maturity of technology

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Human Factors

• Technologies change but concepts,

design and architecture stays

• Team knowledge and professionalism

makes more difference than chosen

technology

• Practice makes perfect

• Reuse of existing code, systems, data

• Simplicity

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New Trends

• Open-source

• Social media: Web 2.0

• Linked and structured data: Web 3.0

• Real-time

• Mobile

• Personalization, filtering

• Privacy

• Security

• Internet of things

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Conclusions

1. Manage Priorities – Start Small

2. Get involved - Vision

3. Cost in stages - Plan releases

4. Focus on Quality

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People – People - People

Questions?

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