Small Talk

We had numberous meetings with leadership team, Project Managers, Technical Architects, with one topic: What went wrong?

Past momths witnessed number of quality issues, some of which caught up with customers, over budget, delayed delivery, finally we lose money alomost on every project. What went wrong?? The question I asked seemed so silly when I tried to understood what is missing there.

I asked if we have an estimation process and methodology. The answer is yes, besides the standard template, we even bought a commercial tool and had the training. But the sales people always bypass the delivery team and made unrealistic promise.

I asked if we have QA process. The answer is yes, and we have two process frameworks, one from Customer IT department, the other one from our parent company. The process and procedure are excessively complicated and they were interpretted differently, certainly in favor of whoever explains.

The software development process is segmented by the customer contract award stategy. A project is chopped into different phases which turn out to be multiple projects. Driven by customer, we, as a vendor, lost focus on scope and requirement analysis. In one extreme case, we need to meet with customer to clarify the requirements a minute before production launch.

Our problem is not the lack of processm but the process awareness and enforcemnet. It is easier to fix the problem caused by lack of process than overprocesed and wihtout enforcement.

It is a big challenge for developer to work in a multiple task environment. ANd it only gets more complicated when communication about process is missing.

We have to streamline the process and make it more effective and easier to understand and follow. End of the day, what really matters is what we actually deliver.