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CM Journal Articles Athletic Tape for Software Development
CM Journal Articles Athletic Tape for Software Development
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| Whether you are an agile shop or using any other methodology, achieving results will require either luck or, more likely, discipline. Far too many shops hope on the former but the most successful depend on the latter. Keeping your teams on track is often thankless but necessary. This month we'll look at ways of staying on the good path and prevent the slow degradation that causes the problems your processes were intended to avoid. The discipline to do this comes from a number of sources.
What Process? Jumping out of the starting blocks the question has to be answered: What are people expected to be accountable for doing? Before you can hold people to a process, it has to be well developed, clear, and contribute positively overall to the organization in some way. Getting people to follow it will also require training and active support from all your members on the Configuration Management. Hopefully you have included each affected area in the development of the process so that everyone's needs are being met and they understand fully what is expected of them. This is an exercise in self-discipline to ensure the groundwork has been laid successfully. Your team should fully understand how to define the agile sprints or operate within whatever methodology you have chosen. They should also understand how the tools help them to do their job(s) well. Improvement Rolls Down Hill Obviously it's much easier to deploy and sustain process with continued managerial support. Authority, budget, and commitment give you all the tools you need. But it rarely happens that way. It is one thing to convince management of the wonders of good process and another to have them seeing real dollar signs in it. Placing a specific dollar amount on the costs of what could go wrong is both difficult and swims against the typical optimism that management likes to see. Can do. No problem. We're almost there. Nothing could go wrong. Unfortunately, our job isn't about hoping for the best but protecting the organization from the worst. "We regression tested the daylights out of the last version, just mark this one as passed on the functional configuration audit." Perfect quality may be unachievable but at every opportunity, we need to work with management to frame their decisions against good practice instead of short term goals. Get on the Train Very few project teams are willing to go offline for training all at the same time. This means you will need to provide multiple training sessions and hound people to get them into the classes. If you have done your job really well, the managers will understand why it's important to attend and will exert their own pressure. That's not always feasible and you end up putting your shoulder into the effort because of managerial inertia. But making sure people are trained initially and offering refresher training through a full class or just periodic tidbits is a huge help to keeping the ship steered in the right direction. The more people are reminded, the more likely they will be to follow the process. Extraordinary Pain The biggest and baddest stick in the inventory will always be actual financial pain. Something has been implemented with terrible results and cost the company real money. Suddenly, everyone is all about good process. While it's good for business to do process well, it's unfortunate that we often have to see problems like this to motivate management effectively. If you find yourself in such an opportunity, use it wisely. Keep people from over doing the process. Every process has to make sense. You want to avoid the backlash that would come with over-burdensome process. The Sledgehammer Related to the financial pain is the external audit. Often, it can determine how much business your company will get and passing it successfully will depend on good process and clear documentation. Auditors will want to see that each functional area member knows the process and that incorruptible evidence has been created to prove the process is being followed. Keep records of your training and try to make it a required part of spooling up company newbies. Some companies see external audits frequently, others never see them. It may only be the quality of the product reflecting the quality and consistency of the processes. The Tack Hammer Internal audits are an easy way to keep the organization focused on process. They don't have to be broad ranging and highly detailed. Specific areas of concern can be highlighted or ruled out as problems depending on the findings. Spot checks and monitoring can keep people aware. Do you have people in your access database who have long since left the organization? Worse, do you have people who have moved to new jobs without having determined what access they no longer need? What about server audits to ensure that what's in the version control tool matches the expected version on the server? You may wonder when anyone has time to do those things but it shouldn't be a reflexive action after quality has been compromised. You may be able to head off larger problems before they get out of hand. Seeing is Believing There is nothing like visibility for getting people to do the things they should. At one organization, I demonstrated a great issue tracking tool and how it could really enhance communication and productivity. When I followed up with participants individually afterward, I was floored when several said, "but people will know what I'm working on and they will expect it to be done." Uhhh, yeah. That's kind of the point. Accountability is the evil twin of quality. Make the process very visible and people become much more amenable to doing things right. Which leads into the next point. Down for the Count Metrics can be a major pain or an awesome ally. If you can track the major difficulties, you can help keep people focused on good process. If you attempted 24 builds and only succeeded with 3, then perhaps your development group needs to create an integration role to better coordinate how the code comes together. Tracking user complaints or defects by module allows an organization to identify opportunities more quickly. It certainly helps if you can pull metrics from the daily activities of the team, rather than as additional work from them. It increases accuracy without getting in their way. In Conclusion Good process, consistently applied, is not a result of a single event or dictate. It's a series of layered activities and choices in the organization. Each is like the winding of athletic tape on a joint where the right amount of wrap adds stability and protection, without compromising the function of the joint. Every reasonable internal audit, access control, training class, and metric does just that job. No single item saves the day. Each adds a layer of protection. But it takes discipline to do the job. Randy Wagner is a Contributing Editor for CM Crossroads and VP of Technology Development with Taylor Bean & Whitaker in Ocala FL. His experience ranges from major financial institutions to multimedia multinationals to the Federal government. Working in small to large project efforts has given him a unique perspective on balancing the discipline of SCM and enterprise change management with the resources and willpower each organization brings to the table. You can reach Randy by email at SR_71_98@yahoo.com.
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| Last Updated on Sunday, 05 August 2007 15:00 |
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