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TwinSPIN Newsletter: Volume 2, Issue 2February 1, 2000
I received the following short note from Tom Gilb, author of 12 Tough Questions in last month's newsletter: "Looks good to me. By the way, you are the first to publish 12 tough in any form! Tom" Another first for the TwinSPIN newsletter! Editing this electronic newsletter has not been easy but it has been rewarding. Learning what it takes to assemble a publication, copyright considerations, learning HTML, etc. have all been a growth experience. Compliments and comments at TwinSPIN meetings have also been gratifying - it's nice to hear the TwinSPIN membership are reading this newsletter and finding value in it. Thank you to all of your who have offered support, encouragement, suggestions, and submissions in our first 4 months of publication. We are constantly looking for new material to include in this newsletter. We have already published material from independent consultants. Recommended by a consensus of interested members, we will also provide access to material from other commercial sources if they provide a valuable service to the TwinSPIN members. This is a gray area in that the difference between valuable information from a commercial source and advertising is somewhat subjective. If you have sources you think would be a good fit for this newsletter or if you have a concern about the value of certain material, please contact either Pat or Esther at the e-mail addresses below. Also new in this issues is the Needs & Leads section. If you need something related to SPI or you want to broadcast an opportunity related to SPI, this may be just the outlet you were looking for! As always, thanks to our contributors, Rick Brenner and Pat O'Toole, for providing articles to the TwinSPIN newsletter. Also thank you to Esther Derby for coming through yet again to publish this newsletter.. Send letters-to-the-editor, comments, questions, submissions, or anything else relevant to Pat Wegerson at weger002@tc.umn.edu or at 612-448-1335. Esther Derby can be reached at estherderby@worldnet.att.net .
Writers Guidelines The goal of the TwinSPIN Newsletter is to provide articles and information with a real world perspective that will be useful to you, the readers. And who could know more about real world software process improvement than the members of a SPIN? If you've ever had the urge to be an author and have an insight you'd like to share, consider writing an article for the Newsletter! In general, articles should be fairly short, not more than 1000 words (since the Newsletter is distributed electronically, we can't accommodate graphs and figures at this time). We're looking for articles with a "how-to" bias, and we also like to put a lighter piece in each issue. Articles that are academic or commercial are less likely to be of interest. If you have an interest in writing an article or contributing one that has been previously published, please contact Pat Wegerson at weger002@tc.umn.edu or at 612-448-1335.
TwinSPIN Meeting Topic: Cultural Change - How to Make Deep Improvements Stick Meeting Directions: For maps:
What Software Quality Professionals Can Offer to Senior Management by Rick Brenner As software development organizations escalate the maturity of their processes, they can encounter constraints imposed by the level of maturity of other parts of the organizations in which they are embedded. One set of constraints comes from the activities of financial managers. Particularly in software companies, financial course changes and corrections in financial management processes can have direct project and product quality effects. Escalating the level of Financial Process Maturity ought to be relatively easy for software companies, but they rarely exploit their special advantages. Software companies are specially advantaged with respect to financial process improvement. Financial professionals use spreadsheet applications to manage financial reporting and budgeting to construct documents and models that are used to allocate resources and to make enterprise decisions. Although it is not widely recognized, these documents and models themselves are software. As such, their authors face many of the problems that software developers face. Financial professionals in software companies have a distinct advantage, because they can draw on in-house expertise to improve the quality of the software intensive components of the financial management process. Much of the software quality knowledge within these companies applies not only to their software products, but to their financial models and reporting tools. Transferring that knowledge from the Software Quality organization to the Financial organization requires translation of terminology and an understanding of cultural differences, but once these are achieved, software companies can harvest additional value from their Software Quality organizations. This line of thinking leads us to these questions: Why Offer ServicesThe quality of products of software companies is in part a result of the organization's Financial Process Maturity. Raising the Financial Process maturity level can reduce the level of wasted resources, increasing the volume of useful available resources. Resource streams within an organization with a more mature financial process are more reliable, which enables product and quality groups to plan more effectively.
Configuration Management. It is common for financial managers not to number the versions of spreadsheet tools and models they create. Source control systems are unheard of. It is perhaps then not surprising that large organizations sometimes find that, upon trying to roll up the budget inputs of a number of departments, some of the work has been done on spreadsheet forms that were supposedly withdrawn and superseded. Software quality professionals can help financial managers develop processes that ensure that such problems appear much more rarely. How can you overcome
obstacles to sharing? We can begin with education. Software quality professionals can learn about the special requirements of financial processes, particularly in the spreadsheet environment. This effort will have immediate payback, even within the software development organization, where spreadsheets are also used. Financial professionals can learn about how much of what they do can actually benefit from a software-centered quality approach. We can make a good beginning by developing assets for use by quality professionals when they use spreadsheets, and then making them available generally within the organization. These ideas provide another way for quality professionals to provide added value to their companies. Copyright © 1998-2000 Richard Brenner Rick Brenner is principal of Chaco Canyon Consulting. He works with people in technology and software organizations who want to make complex products that need state-of-the-art teamwork, and with organizations that want to create innovative products by building stronger relationships between their people. In his 20 years as a software developer, software development manager, entrepreneur and consultant, he has developed valuable insights into the interactions between people in a technical environment, and between people and the technological media in which they work. Rick Brenner can be reached at:
Do's and Don'ts of Software Process Improvement #2 by Pat O'Toole [Editor's note: This is the second of several short articles on "Do's and Don'ts" from Pat O'Toole's experience working in an SEPG. This is written for managers and SEPG members who are implementing CMM-based improvements in their organizations.] DO: Establish the “Alignment Principle” Project managers often tell their customers, “Faster, better, or cheaper – pick two”. What they mean, of course, is that if the customer demands a high quality product in the shortest amount of time, they reserve the right to tell her how much it will cost. Conversely, if the customer prefers a low cost product in the shortest amount of time, it may have quality problems. The point is that the solution space can be constrained in only two of the three dimensions – there must be at least one independent variable. As an SEPG member, the “Alignment Principle” requires you to take this concept a step farther. You need to tell senior management, “faster, better, or cheaper – pick ONE.” Since senior management has funding and firing authority over the SEPG, however, you may want to ask something like:
It seems fairly obvious that if your firm manufactures pace makers, “quality” is the attribute to be maximized. When your major metric is the “plop factor”, you quickly conclude that you will sacrifice a bit of schedule and cost to reduce the number of field reported defects – especially those reported by the relatives of your former customers. What about your company? How would your senior management answer if the question were posed to them? The response to this question is the single most important piece of planning data for the process improvement program, as it is the foundation of the Alignment Principle. Don’t second guess senior management’s answer – get it from the horse’s mouth, write it down, and get them to sign it! (If, when asked to sign, they say, “Nay,” turn the horse around and ask again!) Suppose senior management has just informed you that quality, as defined by field reported defects, is the single most important competitive dimension in the minds of your customers. So now it’s time to craft the Alignment Principle: “Achieve an annual, sustainable X% reduction in field reported defects without degrading current levels of cost, schedule, and functional variance.” Now you know what it means when you say that the SEPG is going to help the projects achieve greater success – and the projects now know what’s most important to senior management. When the SEPG pilots a new process element and demonstrates a measurable reduction of defects, the projects will be beating down your door to get in on the act! Okay, that’s a bit much, but at least you’re all finally rowing the boat in the same direction – you are aligned! What if senior management tells you that the dimension in which you need to excel is time to market? Your heart sinks as your mind echoes the project managers’ complaints about process getting in the way and slowing them down. Now what do you do? Stay tuned for the next installment, “Do: Take Time Getting Faster”. Copyright © Pat O'Toole 2000 Pat O’Toole is one of the most active SEI authorized lead assessors and is a Software Process Improvement Director at TeraQuest Metrics, where he provides consulting, training, and assessment services to major clients. He has conducted a number of formal and informal assessments, including two Level 5 CBA IPIs. With over 20 years of software development, project management, and consulting experience to draw from, Mr. O’Toole works with all different levels of management and SEPGs in establishing, evaluating, and sustaining their process improvement initiatives. He is a popular instructor who supplements standard training material with his vast array of case studies and humorous examples. Pat O'Toole can be reached at:
Web Picks by Pat Wegerson This month's Web Picks is the Software Engineering Information Repository (SEIR) at http//:seir.sei.cmu.edu/ . I stumbled into this site at the Software Engineering Institute's booth at last year's National SEPG conference in Atlanta. This is an extranet site provided by the SEI for "the contribution and exchange of information concerning software engineering improvement activities." Because it is an extranet, it is only available to registered users (but registration is free!) Also, you can not only access plenty of useful information at the SEIR but are encouraged to contribute material to the SEIR. The SEIR links are organized into different "domains" including CMM-based SPI, Measurement & Metrics, People CMM, PSP, and Software Risk Management. Each domain is well organized with categories listed within each domain. There is material from the SEI, from other research centers, from government and industry, and from academia. You can find things dry, inspiring, experimental, experiential, and most things in-between. In addition to links to material from various sources, there are also links to the home page of each source. Because there are so many links to so many places, you can most likely find the topic you're looking for by starting at the SEIR. If you're like me and enjoy exploring new topics, or at least new insights into old topics, you'll want to visit the SEIR web site often. Copyright © Pat Wegerson 2000
Needs & Leads New! Editor's Note: Needs & Leads is a new feature for both the TwinSPIN newsletter and web site. In response to member requests, Needs & Leads provides a forum for requesting and for offering SPI related goods and services. This is offered as a benefit to TwinSPIN members. Needs & Leads may include commercial offerings if the item may benefit the TwinSPIN membership. If, however, you find any offering inappropriate, misleading, or a detriment to TwinSPIN, please contact Pat Wegerson at weger002@tc.umn.edu or Mark Glewwe at glewwe@millcomm.com and we will work to resolve or remove the questionable item. Needs:
Announcements & Calendar Recent and upcoming U.S. SPIN meetings:
About TwinSPIN For the Minneapolis/St. Paul Regional Area TwinSPIN Mission Statement Meetings are normally held on the 1st Thursday of each month from 6-8 PM. TwinSPIN web site: All articles, reviews and commentaries are copyright by the authors, unless otherwise noted. All rights are reserved to the authors. We encourage sharing the TwinSPIN Newsletter in whole or in part if copyright and attribution are always included. |
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