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CM Journal Articles The Business of Software Development
CM Journal Articles The Business of Software Development
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| CM Is a Cost Center, Not a Revenue Center Let's face it, unless you are a member of a consulting service or produce CM products for sale, CM will not gain you anything monetarily. Nothing. Nada. It is not our job to "produce" or to create revenue. In fact, when CM is present in an organization, they have to devote a significant amount of direct and indirect fiscal resources to fund CM. Why would any sane manager do this? We sputter and try to justify ourselves with ROI and increased quality of final product. We point to study after study that says a lack of CM is directly related to many product failures. We use all of the normal, "Of course we have value to the company!" arguments. We point to government regulations and process improvement efforts all requiring CM. We point to our historical charter of activities, "Identification, Control, Status Accounting and Audit." When it all comes down to budget time, those organizations that "get it" will direct resources to CM and those that don't, won't.  So what are we really? We are the pain in Management's side when they try to cut corners. We are paranoid and proud of it. We nit-pick and make sure everything is done properly. We are the conscience of an organization. CM is like Accounting in a lot of ways. Accounting can be done simply when things are small and grow to more and more complexity as organizations grow. They start out just making sure the company gets paid what it is owed and pays what it owes to others in turn. In a timely fashion. Things get a little more complicated when inventory, regulatory requirements, licensing, etc. get brought into the Accounting realm. CM makes sure the proper CIs are used to generate the final product, that QC receives a controlled copy for testing and that we can integrate the appropriate third party components into our product consistently and reliably. CM, along with Accounting, ensure that all expiration dates and licenses are tracked. CM, along with Legal, ensure that all third party licenses are compatible with each other and with our products. CM monitors component changes for unplanned or unexpected changes. We may or may not be the one responsible for deciding what to do with them, but you can bet we will be tasked with either doing the "repair" or monitoring it. We set up automated builds, track both planned and unplanned changes though the codebase, identify what has changed for use by others in generating release notes and firewalled regression tests, and last, but not least, explain what CM is to new hires who don't have a clue. So why is it so hard to justify CM? We are the Accounting function of Engineering, so why do we keep having to justify not just our tools and infrastructure, but ourselves. Accounting makes sure we get paid for products we sell and/or license. We make sure the products we produce are available for sale. We are not even alone in this; Quality has just as hard a battle for funds and resources as CM. So let's take a step back and look at the big picture.  The diagram shows a representation of the 5 key component groups within a Development Organization. It shows the relationship between Development and CM to be much more intimate than with either QA or QC, just as the relationship between QA and QC is more intimate. Management permeates all aspects of the organization. In this diagram, only Development can be considered to be a Revenue Center; all others, including any not shown on the diagram, are Cost Centers. This is why Development generally tends to get the, "What Development wants, Development gets," response when other groups try to enforce anything that drops productivity. We all have to keep in mind that the end product is what pays our salary and benefits. Management worries about Profit and Market Share. They worry about Competitive Deadlines as the first to market generally holds an advantage, regardless of quality or feature set. This is why each of the Cost Center groups must justify themselves in terms of Process Improvement first, Meeting Customer Expectations a close second and only then in terms of overall quality improvement. Of course, if a company has been bit by poor quality products enough in the past, the Customer Expectations (or lack thereof) may make it much easier to get Quality related justifications looked at seriously. So what is the basic Development Process? The second diagram shows the basic process flow with the same color coding as above. Let's try to expand these somewhat as bullet points: 
Where does CM really live in the Development Process Flow? We live "above" it. We pervade it to a large extent. We are, to a large extent, the process watch dogs and the whistle blowers. We hold tight to the product assets and assist QA in bringing a halt to bad practices. We are the cops who just gave you a speeding ticket and are asking for raises, newer and faster cars and better radar. Organizations with an effective CM program do produce better and faster with an overall better quality of product in the end. But prove it before the fact? Not gonna happen - unless there is already a belief that it will. A Final Note No keyboards were actually destroyed during the creation of this article; however one UPS did give up its smoke to the cause. It was buried by IT with full honors. Ben Weatherall is currently based in Fort Worth, Texas where he practices Practical CM on a daily basis using a combination of CVS and custom tools to support a modified Agile-SCRUM development methodology. He is a member of IEEE, ASEE (Association of Software Engineering Excellence – The SEI’s Dallas based SPIN Affiliate), NTLUG (North Texas Linux Users Group), and PLUG (Phoenix Linux Users Group).
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... Excellent Article. Is it wise to club Dev and CM; QA and QC to make one group as far as the mgmt is concerned? This could simplify some of the mgmt activities. Any thoughts? Also, from the above illustartion, how much interaction does CM team got to do with QA team? |
Patrick Hinde
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... I found this artical very accurate and interesting. As a CM manager it made me both smile and frown. |
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