Obviously Douglass’s quote refers to a more sinister theme, but it does apply to what we experience on a day to day basis, indeed his quote holds true for us as individuals, as team members and furthermore as employees of organizations (and I could keep going).
In order to advance, we have to force ourselves to change; in fact, we have to embrace change, as struggling to change will bring us progress. For an organization, progress can be measured in different ways: efficiency, effectiveness, performance, etc. and can apply to different functions of the organization: operations, finances, marketing, etc.
As an IS/IT professional, you should embrace change for your software development organization: challenge your ways of doing things, consider new methods, review best practices, and investigate new software. Going through the struggle of changing your ways of doing things will definitively yield some positive results.
Your first typical steps should be:
- Business and IS don’t talk; requirements delivered are always different than requirements requested: Review Application Life-Cycle Management patterns and practices. Why? IDC research indicates that 70-80% of software development failures result from poor requirements gathering, analysis and management. Implementing AL M concepts will alleviate this
- You are still using paper documents and folders to track and document your software development process steps or your source control is out of control: Investigate Team Foundation Server with Visual Studio Team System. Why? Because both EDS and DELL showed ROI of over 200% within 6 months after they implemented the software development platform.
Usually, when we talk about those benefits to customers their first reactions are “Yes, but we are different”, “We are smaller than EDS or DELL”, “We have a business to run…We don’t have time to change”…Well, in reality, most organizations are not so different; they are facing the same challenges and are seeking similar benefits. The concepts and tools described above will improve any software development organizations regardless of their size. Like yours.
The key to success is “common sense”! Target the right areas, in the right orders, at the right level. The good news, you have access to partners and tools that will help you assess your current state and help you map out the roadmap ahead of you, while supporting you through those required changes.
The real question is can you afford status-quo?
References:
InCycle Software : http://incycle-corpweb.azurewebsites.net/
ALM Catalyst program: http://www.microsoft.com/click/almcatalyst/
Agile Impact report by Rally Software: http://www.rallydev.com/
EDS and DELL case studies by Nucleus Research: http://nucleusresearch.com/