IS Survivor has delivered a software project management reality check for organizations putting process before people. Externally devised best practices and processes are something of a bug bear because they don�t take into account the subtle nuances of how individuals in real-life IT teams work.
Summarizing IS Survivor: the best-run software projects - like companies - are those where management builds relationships with people rather than relying on workflows or project reporting tools to steer things or find out what�s going on.
One piece in IS Survivor in particular resonated with us:
“Project teams, like all organizations, are intensely human activities. For some unaccountable reason, many project management methodologies, business schools, and entire consulting practices ignore this simple, inescapable fact. They view the enterprise one dimensionally, as collections of processes, or cash flows, or value chains, knowable through reports, dashboards and scorecards.
Some project managers, IT managers, business managers and executives fall into this trap, mistaking reports for the state of the business. Presumably, when on vacation, they similarly mistake the map for the countryside.”
It’s true. There is a tendency for big vendors and consultants to apply their own processes and methodologies to their customers� projects, with the processes mandating what steps should be taken, and when, and the process delivered through application development or reporting tools. It’s no wonder so many software projects either run late or leave the customer feeling dissatisfied with the end results, because features they wanted don’t get delivered or don�t work.
Rather than plugging into process, organizations should try to understand and exploit their existing, but probably hidden, project biorhythms and make these their workflows and processes. And where it’s difficult to maintain personal relationships with staff — the kind IS Survivor believes are important — then metrics-based tools should be used that are capable of communicating to management what’s happening and that help team leaders proactively support developers in real-time.
The message? Software development is a people business. The reporting tools companies use to run software development projects should reflect this fact.
Local television station WRAL takes notice of 6th Sense Analytics:
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/1058424/
SoftwareMag.com reflects on the lastest release of 6th Sense Analytics:
"Development team members install a sensor manager, or data collector, to their computers. 6th Sense Analytics sensors are automatically installed based on the tools already installed on the desktop. Development teams develop software as normal, without any impact on their development process. Sensors send activity data to a centralized 6th Sense Analytics server. Individual, team and project results data is available for analysis by developer, project leads and managers to analyze and report on."
Full Article:
http://www.softwaremag.com/L.cfm?doc=980-9/2006
Provides Accurate, Automated Visibility into Software Projects; New Functionality Supports Maintenance Efforts
MORRISVILLE, NC -- September 25, 2006 -- 6th Sense Analytics, a pioneer in improving software development metrics, today announced a new version of its leading-edge technology for automatically collecting software development data and aggregating metrics. 6th Sense provides the basis for keeping software projects on time, on budget and on target with business goals, and includes new levels of automation that directly support maintenance needs -- data that offers a clear answer to exactly how much time is spent on maintenance activities like defect tracking and change requests, and exactly how those actions impact cost and successful product completion.
Traditional application development tools have not met the challenge of delivering accurate visibility into development processes. As a result, software development projects have been left to chance, which has led to a stunningly high rate of failure. 6th Sense Analytics is in a unique position to change the face of software development by delivering accurate and up-to-date software metrics that empower organizations to better manage projects, while keeping them on track with business goals.
"Today's software development projects are highly distributed and complex, which makes the need for accurate metrics more critical than ever," said Dana Gardner, principal analyst for Interarbor Solutions. "The challenge is gaining accurate and transparent visibility into the actual work patterns of developers, and, more importantly, amassing the metadata of development productivity analytics. Organizations without visibility into development processes are putting business goals at risk."
The key to 6th Sense's solution is its ability to automatically gather data without requiring developers to change their working processes or their tool selection. All the data captured through 6th Sense sensors is unobtrusive to the user and is presented via a variety of visualization and analysis tools for developers, project managers and IT executives.
6th Sense arms development organizations with information about the development process and resource utilization via an independent, open, web-services architecture to collect and analyze software development metrics. The metrics delivered by 6th Sense can be viewed in a wide variety of ways, including by team, activity, time, tools used and even file extension. With easy to use and highly configurable reporting capabilities built on SVG technology, teams can quickly aggregate data, clearly understanding what developers are doing, what tools and technologies they are using, and how much time they've spent on development activities such as editing, viewing, debugging and testing. All of this allows software development teams to improve their ability to deliver successful project outcomes.
6th Sense Analytics 2.0
The first release of the 6th Sense solution focused on harvesting accurate, fact-based metrics about developers' work in real time, particularly measuring Active Time (time spent in development activities, including editing, viewing, debugging and testing) and Flow Time (Active Time a developer spends on a specific task without interruptions for 20 minutes or more).
"The new functionality in the 6th Sense solution goes beyond just providing insight; it extends the way we look at development efforts, allowing teams to gain transparency into maintenance efforts and their impact on the software development process," said Todd Olson, CTO and co-founder of 6th Sense Analytics. "With this ability, managers have a way to increase their success in on-time delivery."
Version 2.0 extends its automated capabilities from capturing data on development team actions, to providing data that specifically focuses on maintenance efforts; from defect tracking and bug fixes to change requests. Managers and team members can easily see how much Active Time was spent on maintenance activities, which team members were involved in addressing them and the results of the time spent. With this improved visibility, the financial impact of maintenance efforts can identified and managed.
By broadening the set of tools data is gathered from to include leading source control management and change request management systems, software development teams can combine use 6th Sense's new analytics with data they already have to better understand the immediate effect on delivery and overall project costs. Tools supported by 6th Sense include Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, Eclipse and Emacs, among others. For a complete list, visit the 6th Sense website at www.6thsenseanalytics.com.
Pricing and Availability
Version 2.0 of the 6th Sense solution will be available mid-October 2006. 6th Sense is a Software as a Service (SaaS) hosted solution available from the 6th Sense website. The 6th Sense solution is available in two editions; Personal Edition is available free of charge; and Team Edition which aggregates project metrics, is available for $960 per user per year.
About 6th Sense Analytics
6th Sense Analytics, a pioneer in improving software development metrics, gives developers and managers deep insight into their software development process by delivering accurate metrics without interrupting the software development lifecycle or changing the tools used. The company uses an open and independent architecture that provides visibility into the status of distributed software projects. Founded in 2004 by a team of experienced executives in the software development market, representing companies including Rational (now IBM), TogetherSoft and Borland, 6th Sense Analytics is a privately held company based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
Continued from S Curves within 6th Sense Analytics
I've been so focused on looking at S Curves from a work perspective that I forgot to illustrate their flexibility. Simply put -- they really can be applied to nearly anything that examines cumulative work over time. Another good software centered application is for testing and defect trending.
Defect Discovery Trending
If you think about it, project defect discovery should also follow an S Curve for any given release. You'll get a flat period as the software is turned over to the testing team for initial Smoke Testing and acceptance. Then you should see an acceleration period as defects are discovered. Finally, there should be a settling period as the testing phase is concluded.
What's interesting here is that we're not viewing work, but actual defects. And in this case, we're viewing total defects found (the work in this case) over time. The same interesting rules apply. For example, you should very well see similar S Curves for early testing cycles as opposed to late, pre-release testing cycles. Early ramp-ups might be very rocky as the testing teams gain familiarity with new features, while later ramp-ups should reduce in time.
You should also see different acceleration levels depending on where you are in the development lifecycle. Again, if you're testing early software, you should see slow acceleration and even more flat sections as you encounter show stopper or test blocking defects. These should certainly disappear as the testing cycle and product matures.
Read More
Continued from "S Curves - An Introduction"
In this post I want to map some of my ongoing S Curve discussion to 6th Sense Analytics data. The reason I�m bringing up S Curves in the first place is I feel they are a solid complimentary tool for traditional project tracking and management. Additionally, using Active Time as your project work indicator is particularly useful because of its accuracy and relationship
to true project work, as it naturally filters out much of the noise associated with the work.
I want to share a couple of Active Time S Curve charts from real 6th Sense Analytics development work so you get a more concrete feel for their format and usefulness.
Individual Project Team Member S Curves
Chart 1 illustrates a 3 team member effort that was focused towards server level work within the 6th Sense Analytics engine during a 2 month period of time. While there were 3 engineers physically assigned to the work, as you can see, Peter is the only fully engaged contributor. In fact, if the project assumptions had all 3 contributing at the same rate, then this chart would indicate a resource dilution or diversion from plan.
So this chart is useful for verifying resource assumptions at a more gross level as they contribute to the project and you can clearly see the S shaped curve for Peter.
Chart 1 - click to enlargeProject Based S Curves
As you saw, the individual S Curve view to a project displays the nuance for each contributor. However, an equally powerful view is seeing how the entire team is contributing, and subsequently how well the overall project behavior matches your expectations. In Chart 2 the 3 engineers are rolled up into a project S Curve for the same period of time.
Now keep in mind that the roll up in the example is not that spectacular because Randy & Todd were not contributing very heavily during this time interval. However, if there were a team of 5 contributing fully, you�d see a fundamentally different (cumulative) picture.
Chart 2 - click to enlargeLonger Duration S Curves � Repeated Cycles
As you extend the duration for the S Curves, you see the curves cycling or repeating over time as the Analytics Server project gets worked on by the team. In Chart 3 below you see the same teams� contribution rates increase over time, with Randy and Todd starting to increase and Peter�s actually tapering off abut thru the middle of 2006.
If you examine their cumulative trends you�ll see individual S Curves represented within each. For example, you see flattening periods around April 9th and May 14th that surely represent completion of specific work items. In order to figure out exactly what they were, we�d have to cross reference against their plan details.
Chart 3 - click to enlargeChart 4 represents the same time period and engineers, just at the project level. It�s a bit simpler here to see the ongoing project S Curves as the project progresses through several development iterations.
Chart 4 - click to enlargeOne of the reasons I�m so bullish on 6th Sense Analytics data is the cumulative power of Active Time views for generating S Curves. By toggling between individuals, technologies, and projects and adjusting your durations to cover interesting project milestones, you can create and extremely powerful project management view into your work and progress!
This post will be continued�
This article on call-center CRM popped up on the radar. While the piece talks of the challenge in monitoring and managing call center agents, one paragraph in particular caught our eye.
Analyst Gartner: “Cautioned contact centers and enterprises to listen closely to whenever a vendor uses the term ’suite,’ as many bundled offerings now on the market actually consist of components that were built using a variety of tools. As a result these offerings are more ‘portfolios’ than they are suites, resulting in countless administration environments, support complexities and overlapping functionalities that are both unnecessary and costly.”
Anyone who’s wrestled with application development and reporting suites will recognize this parallel. IT vendors have grown their development and reporting “suites” through the years and during multiple acquisitions. The result? Tools that were intended to help reporting on projects that actually hinder the process and cost money into the bargain (through licensing and support). These tools fail to collect data in real time while lack of integration with the rest of the portfolio makes its difficult for customers to filter data or access information in real time.
The suites argument has always been something of a smoke screen by IT vendors. It’s time to get back to tools that actually do what they say on the packet.
P.J. Connolly of sdtimes.com writes “Can a manager be an impediment to developer efficiency? According to 6th Sense Analytics, the answer can sometimes be yes.”
Read the whole story:
http://www.sdtimes.com/article/story-20060901-13.html
In my last post I introduced the notion of S Curves as a mechanism for managing projects. While it's not as exact as tracking to a schedule, it does provide meaningful patterns for determining project status and progress against historical baselines. It's also a quick way to analyze and gain visibility into the workings of your projects.
Project Start-up and Close-down
As we discussed, the initial flat period in the S Curve represents the start-up of your projects. The final flattening period represents the project closing. You should monitor your project start-up and close-down durations and notice a similar period for most efforts. Also become familiar with the average number of days it takes your team to ramp into a project, taking note when you exceed or surpass this average as performance indicator for follow-up action.
Project Acceleration
Project acceleration is the period of focused work in most projects. The S Curve clearly represents your work acceleration and accumulation over time. I like to compare my acceleration across similarly scoped projects, using a historical project as a baseline and then compare my current project against it. Depending on the results, again, I might see some troubling gaps that indicate a lack of expected forward progress or even a premature flattening�loss of acceleration. All of which would cause me to take a more detailed look into the dynamics that created the change.
Overlaying Milestones
By themselves, S Curves give you a graphical sense for progress. When you compare them against any historically similar projects as baselines, they can also give a comparison point to look for performance gaps. However, you need to overlay appropriately detailed project milestones (plans) against them to truly manage your projects.
For example, if you planned for a new project to begin accelerating after 5 days and it has taken 10, then you clearly have a problem. Many things could have contributed to this.
- You might have a new team that is struggling with tools or technologies for the given project and just not coming up to speed as you expected.
- You might have had a delay in resources joining your project from another project as planned. Heck -- you might look at the other projects S Curve to gain a feel for when you'll get your folks�
- It could also be that requirements have not been sufficiently finalized for the team to begin actively creating content.
You get the idea as to the possibilities. The S Curve gives you a quick indication of a problem that you need to sort out for root cause and then rectify. They also can give you a quick indication as to how effectively you've corrected the problem and how well you're accelerating through it.
Keep in mind that you can and should contrast your project S Curves with planned data (milestones and baseline expectations) and historical S Curves from similar projects (scope, complexity, type of work) in order to gain a feel for how well you are stacking up.
Read the next post in this series.
With IT under growing pressure to provide better value for money and to “support the business,” a new report from Aberdeen Group makes interesting reading.
The analyst has found that most companies are trying to devise a set of incentives for employees, founded on metrics, to help improve their levels of customer service. Aberdeen cites Sears and Time Warner Cable as working on this.
Aberdeen continues, though, that many companies are actually falling short in their goal, and struggling to manage service performance.
Aberdeen’s findings are important to those in application development because IT is increasingly being regarded as something that must also deliver good customer service. IT has a tougher time than someone in sales or in a call center though, because it invariably serves two types of customers, rather than just one. IT’s customers can be end users inside the employer company (where the IT shop acts as the service provider) and users of the employer’s products. People like Sears and Time Warner are invariably focused on just serving external customers, with retail products or cable bundles and services.
We at 6th Sense Analytics are in the business of real-time analytical metrics - in other words, we deliver the metrics organizations will use to measure performance of IT in dealing with internal and external consumers of our work. Metrics, though, are just one half of this story when it comes to measuring performance. Once you have the data, the question then becomes: what do I do with these metrics - and that’s where companies are struggling.
While Aberdeen is not talking about our own area specifically, the analyst does make some recommendations that people working with metrics should bear in mind when sifting data and devising those performance benchmarks. Here are four good points:
Pick the right key performance indicators
Align individual stakeholder goals with the organization- and corporate-wide goals
Lay a solid and predictable foundation with the service contract
(Importantly) don’t lose sight of the customer experience.
