Dr. Dobb's Journal - December 2007 - (Page 62)

d12ambler_p4ma 10/15/07 8:30 AM Page 62 The Agile Edge I have always believed that if a project team gets into trouble it should either be redirected so as to get it out of trouble or the project should be cancelled. I was shocked to discover that on average only 40.9 percent of respondents felt that canceling a troubled project should be considered successful. Worse yet, only 33.3 percent of business stakeholders felt All/Commercial/ Stakeholders NonMgmt. IT Project Govt./IT Mgmt. Mgmt. this way, and only 1 Quality Quality Quality Quality 35.7 percent within 2 Scope Scope Staff Scope the public (govern3 Staff Time Scope Time 4 Time Money Time Staff ment) sector. In my 5 Money Staff Money Money opinion, when a Table 1: Prioritizing project success criteria. questionable project is started, then Project IT NonMgmt. Business All Managers Managers IT Stakeholders may you have portShipping when 50.3% 63.1% 64.1% 73.3% 61.3% folio management the system is ready is more problems. However, important than if the project was shipping on schedule good at the beginProviding the best 62.4% 76.9% 71.1% 86.7% 79.6% ROI is more important ning, but then it ran than delivering under budget into trouble, then Delivering high quality 78.2% 87.7% 90.4% 86.7% 87.3% redirecting or canis more important than delivering on time and celing it is a reflecon budget tion of good portfoTable 2: Comparing responses of various constituents. lio management. When I give public presentations, one of my favorite questions to ask the audience is whether they’ve been on an IT project which they knew was going to fail right from the very start. So I asked the same question on the survey, and sure enough the majority of people, 68.6 percent, said that this had in fact happened to them. Sadly, 73.3 percent of business stakeholders, 78.2 percent of project managers, and 76.9 percent of IT managers also indicated this. In other words, the people in a position to get the project on the right track, or at least in a position to influence the people who could do so, couldn’t do anything about it. Granted, they may not have been in decision-making positions when they ran into such a situation. Then again, they’re now in these positions and are aware of the problem, so hopefully we’ll see this problem diminish over time. Success Is in the Eye of the Beholder I believe that there are several important lessons to be taken away from this survey. First and foremost, IT project teams enjoy a higher success rate than what we’re commonly told. Second, it appears that organizations have their own definition of success, and perhaps even different definitions for different types of projects. Third, Agile software development techniques appear to enjoy a measurably greater success rate than traditional or offshoring projects. Fourth, because we’re nowhere near a 100-percent success rate there is still room for improvement. The implication is that software process improvement (SPI) efforts are something that we need to invest in. I have posted the original survey questions, the source data from the survey (with identifying information removed), and a PowerPoint slide deck summarizing the results at www.ambysoft.com/surveys/ success2007.html. Please take advantage of these resources. DDJ Scott is a DDJ Senior Contributing Editor, Practice Leader Agile Development with IBM Rational, and author of several best-selling books. He can be contacted at www.ambysoft.com/ scottAmbler.html. 62 Dr. Dobb’s Journal l www.ddj.com l December 2007 http://www.ambysoft.com/surveys/success2007.html http://www.ambysoft.com/surveys/success2007.html http://www.rallydev.com/ddj http://www.rallydev.com/ddj http://www.ambysoft.com/scottAmbler.html http://www.ambysoft.com/scottAmbler.html http://www.ddj.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Dr. Dobb's Journal - December 2007

Dr. Dobb's Journal - December 2007 Contents Hmmmm Alia Vox Developer Diaries Developer’s Notebook Computer Books: Reading Between the Lines Conversations Query Anything with SQLite XQuery Web Maps with the Google Map API OpenALM and Its Manifesto Transactional Programming Effective Concurrency The Agile Edge Swaine’s Flames

Dr. Dobb's Journal - December 2007

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