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My company is currently in the midst of delivering software that will help revamp our enterprise measurement program. In a way, we are defining the standard to which our software development projects will be graded on.

Here are some of the measurements we are interested in:

Product fault density
Requirements volatility
Defect containment
Development productivity
Hours per defect
Software size growth
Engineering percent rework
Action item aging
Risk and opportunity tracking
Earned value management systems measurements such as cost performance indicator and schedule performance indicator

The benefit of having a set of common measures for our business is quality product deliveries--which translates into increased customer satisfaction and ultimately improves the bottom line.  

Take for example the measure of fault density. This is a lagging indicator to measure the quality of the software product after the development effort has completed. This is measured in terms of 1,000 logical source lines of code (KSLOC). This measure is calculated as:

        Number of Defects/ KSLOC

The data are compared against organizational thresholds. Root cause analysis on the variance can point to issues with software complexity and insufficient/ineffective test life cycle. Keep in mind that having meaningful thresholds calibrated for your organization is the key to ensure you don't waste your time with needless analysis.

With that said, what measures do you consider important to your business?

Green IT projects may be in for a big push in the United States thanks to the country's newly appointed CTO.

In May 2008 Aneesh Chopra, then the secretary of technology for the state of Virginia, USA, told Government Technology magazine:

"Data centers are the energy hogs of the 21st century, and if we all believe we need to have renewable energy and energy independence in this country, those of us in the IT community must step up and acknowledge that we are net consumers in a significant way."

Sounds good--but will he really get people to hear the message?

Sivasailam (Siva) Sankar, PMP, president of the PMI Government Specific Interest Group, says U.S. President Barack Obama has made the creation of a transparent and connected democracy one of the key agenda items.

"The administration has already defined several key priorities, like the use of cutting-edge technologies to create a new level of transparency and improve the exchange of information between federal government and citizens, protect [networks], deploy broadband in every community, lower healthcare costs by investing in electronic information technology systems ... just to name a few."

Siva says the CTO's role is to promote technological innovation and develop national strategies for using advanced technologies to transform economy and society.

"There will be many technology projects initiated to satisfy the administration's core initiatives. Effective project management is vital for the success of the projects to ensure they're completed on time, on budget as well as utilizing public funds in an appropriate manner. I expect that the federal government would place a large emphasis on project management processes. I would also hope that effective portfolio management and governance processes will be implemented as well."

Siva says the appointment of Mr. Chopra is fitting because he has provided significant leadership as secretary of technology for Virginia in many forward-looking initiatives.

"He has practical experience in championing and providing high-level leadership to several high-tech projects."
 
 

I work with an IT software development organization, so most of my posts are specific to software development projects. During the testing phase, we typically experience the following problems:

1.    We expend approx 15% to 20% of the development effort in the bug-fixing phase.
2.    Our team discovers a lot of missing functionality during the testing phase.
3.    Quality assurance (QA) and development teams have different mindsets, so they understand the same feature in different ways.
4.    Test cases written by the QA are a conversion of a software requirements specifications document into an excel format.
5.    During and after the coding phase, the developer doesn't often test the application himself and instead leaves everything for QA. He tends to believe bug identification is QA's task and that the developer should only be responsible for fixing bugs.
 
    I think the software testing cycle works on the 90:10 rule: Ninety percent of the project takes 10% of the allocated time, while the remaining 10% takes 90% of the time. After expending a lot thought on this process, we came up with some solutions that may reduce the testing and bug fixing cycle:

1.    Let the QA and development teams both review the requirements and get necessary clarifications from the client.
2.    Ask the developer to give a presentation of his project understanding to QA and his module lead.
3.    Have QA prepare the test cases.
4.    Ensure test cases cover the functionality as well as the user cases and scenarios
5.    Have the developer review and log defects, too.
6.    After the completion of the coding phase, ask the developer to run high priority test cases prepared by QA.
7.    The developer should submit the test log to QA.
8.    QA shall start the testing.
9.    Each discovered bug should have a corresponding test case ID. If the test case doesn't exist for the bug, then QA should add a new test case for it. This will ensure the test cases have covered all the use cases.
10.    In the test log for each failed test case, enter the bug ID. This will ensure all bugs are raised and tracked to closure.
11.    Perform the Root Cause Analysis (RCA) for each bug and improve the coding process.
12.    Track the bugs raised by QA versus the bugs raised in user acceptance testing or bugs raised in production.
13.    Test cases should be data-oriented, and QA should be trained enough to write simple SQL (Structured Query Language) queries.
14.    The test log should show the number of rounds executed with the number of test cases that have failed, passed or have not been executed for each round of testing.
15.    Track the actual effort spent in the testing and bug fixing phases to better plan for the next module or project.
 

I'm always looking for the good news these days. Here is something I thought might be encouraging ...
    Baseline.com listed project management and project portfolio management as No. 9 of 10 on its list of IT trends for 2009. The article said:

In today's time-sensitive and budget-conscious world, getting projects finished on time is paramount. Not surprisingly, more and more organizations are turning to structured systems and software to track all the details. Consequently, project management (PM) and project portfolio management (PPM) have moved into the spotlight.

    This sense of hyper-efficiency taking over the business world (mostly in response to what else, but the global economic crisis) could open a lot of doors for project professionals.

The results of two recently released studies run the gamut on the good, the bad and the ugly of the state of IT right now.
    First, the bad and the ugly from The McKinsey Quarterly study called McKinsey Survey on information technology strategy and spending.
Some of the most interesting take-a-ways include:
•    Two-thirds of respondents--who include CIOs, CTOs and other senior-level people--say their organizations are at risk from information- and technology-based disruption
•    Over 40 percent of respondents favor improving the talent of IT staff and increasing the accountability of business units for implementing IT initiatives
•    Only 23 percent of executives expect to increase their operating costs in 2009, while 43 percent expect to reduce them
    Now, some good. When asked about effectiveness of delivering IT projects on time and on budget, 30 percent of respondents did say they were extremely effective, while 38 percent said they were somewhat effective. (Check out PMI president and CEO Gregory Balestrero's perspective on the study and what it means to project managers.)
    A study of more than 1,000 companies claims the economic downturn is pushing more and more companies to invest in green IT technologies. Twenty-five percent of companies are implementing a comprehensive green IT program, up from 15 percent last year and up from 20 percent in April 2008.
    While the motive may be selfish--saving money on energy costs--it doesn't diminish the outcome.

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama is putting IT and technology on the national stage--literally. He relied heavily on the use of the Internet and social media tools like Facebook, Flickr and text messaging throughout his campaign.
    And now he plans to appoint the country's first chief technology officer (CTO), a cabinet-level position aimed squarely at bringing technology in the public sector up to par with private industries.
    There is a lot of speculation centered on who will fill the trailblazing position. Names supposedly on the shortlist Shane Robinson of HP and Edward Felten of Princeton University.
    Never has a U.S. president recognized the importance of IT and technological innovation like Obama. And this is sure to be good for industry projects down the road. In fact, two of Obama's three technology pillars on his website indicate increased project activity.

1. Barack Obama will protect the openness of the Internet:
Obama and [Vice President-elect Joe] Biden strongly support the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet.
2. Deploy a modern communications infrastructure:
Obama and Biden believe we can get true broadband to every community in America.
3. Improve America's competitiveness:
Obama and Biden will ensure our goods and services are treated fairly in foreign markets, invest in the sciences, and will provide new research grants to the most outstanding early career researchers in the country.

Web 2.0 projects still get plenty of buzz--and money. Global spending on the technology is expected to reach $4.6 billion in 2013, up from $764 billion in spending this year, according to a survey by Forrester Research. But does it actually deliver an ROI? The answer is a resounding maybe, or sometimes. You can check out the full results in the November PM Network, but here's a glimpse of what people are using--and not.

There are a lot of great projects going on in the world. Many of them are doing good for the world one deliverable at time while meeting the strategic needs of the organization. There's one in particular I want to highlight, because honestly, I just thought it was cool. I'm going to call it the "accident waiting to happen" project--and I mean that in a good way.
    European researchers are working together to build an automotive system that takes information from several sources to predict hazardous situations on roads--or accidents waiting to happen. Sounds like an expensive venture, right? The project team, however, is using low-cost technology, some of which already exists, to build the entire system. Andrea Migliavacca, the project's coordinator, told ScienceDaily.com:
    "We did not try to reinvent the wheel. It there was another European project working on a system we could use, we took that."
    These types of projects--ones that improve everyday life--are my favorite to learn about. We write a lot about them in PM Network--some people say too much. But I just think these types of project highlight the importance of the profession. Because without it, ventures like these would not be possible--or at least not very successful.

The growing global financial crisis is having a negative effect on a lot of things. Stock markets. Unemployment rates. Banks.
    And now, IT budgets and projects.
    According to an October survey by CIO magazine, 40 percent of CIOs around the world plan to cut their budgets from last year. The survey of 243 technology leaders also revealed that 72 percent have postponed or are planning to postpone discretionary IT projects.
    And it gets worse. Twenty-three percent of those surveyed had already let go of employees, while another 11 percent planned to do so in the future.
    A scary thought for an industry whose reputation (warranted or not) for delivering projects on time and on budget has never really been stellar. In fact, I found an August 2007 survey by Dynamic Markets Ltd. that said 63 percent of IT projects failed. And during my regular reading of project management materials over the last few days I came across four separate stories about specific IT project that were either in trouble (over budget, falling way off schedule, etc.) or had failed altogether.
    The worst of those stories was about the U.K. National Health Service's "Connecting for Health" project. The £12 billion (yes, billion) project is four years late and racking up a lot of criticism. From the nation's Daily Telegraph:
     "The Government's IT programmes fail on cost, reliability and security grounds because Whitehall ignores the best practice in the private sector when designing systems."
    So while I can see the reason behind these cutbacks and freezes, I can only imagine at what cost they will come to the industry as a whole. Will quality really endure if money and people don't as well?
    This sounds bad, right? But, there is a silver lining: Innovation. PMI president and CEO Gregory Balestrero discussed the importance of "innovating our way out" of these tough times. And it seems as if the IT industry is trying.
    Bill Synder, an ex-contributor to PCWorld.com who covered tech stocks for TheStreet.com, says conversations with heads of technology powerhouses like Sun Microsystems and IBM are putting a postive spin (albeit a small one) on the present situation--and they are doing it with innovation.
    Initiatives like cloud computing that aren't afraid to break new ground are attracting major dollars.
    "Major firms are already planning a $1 bullion and $2 billion cloud initiatives...," Mr. Synder says.