Software Development Center: Software Development Process Improvement - Essay Example

Software Development Center: Software Development Process Improvement Name Course Instructor Date Table of Contents Process Improvement Plan Report 3 Study participants 3 Overview of the organization 4 Company history 6 Clients’ perspective on quality 6 Client’s needs 9 Process adopted in identifying causes for delivering the product over-budget 10 QFD House of Quality 12 Cost categories for software development 12 Recommendations 13 References 15 Fig 1: Classification of costs 13 Fig 2: Development process 14 Process Improvement Plan Report This plan outlines the project for process improvement in Software Development Center. The need for this study was realized after one of the company’s customers ordered special design software which was to be delivered under strict deadlines. While the software was developed and delivered on time, the company was not able to make a profit from that assignment. It became apparent that the company processes were not friendly to production that was outside the company’s normal production process. Because production of bespoke software is becoming more and more in demand, it was observed to be imperative for the process to be improved in order for the company capitalize on the new opportunities provided by this development. The report is a culmination of a study conducted in the company in relation to software development processes with a view to establish where the process failed to allow the provision of the program in good time. This plan is meant to report on all potential areas of improvement that were found in the different divisions. It is not meant to set out a finite plan over a limited duration of time, however, it lays down a foundation for ongoing, continuous improvement initiatives for the review of software development process in the entire company. Study participants Different individuals were involved in the development of this report. The main part of this report was developed as a result of consultations with many of the stakeholders involved in different stages of development in the company as well as others who are not directly involved in development of the software although they still play an important role in the company’s overall ability to deliver on orders in good time. All the said stakeholders were interviewed to show their views on what needed to be done to improve the company’s profitability when working on bespoke software. Overview of the organization Software Development Center is a software development company headquartered in Sydney with an office in Cape Town. The cornerstone of the company's software development strategy is a balancing combination of technology and customer needs. SDC develops gaming solutions based on a range of platforms and technologies, including Windows, Macintosh, Unix, Linux, .Net, J2EE, J2SE, J2ME, Symbian OS, Windows Mobile 2003 and mobile embedded systems. Software Development Company takes great pride in its development team. SDC believes that people are the key to successfully providing high quality gaming software and more importantly, cultivating an ongoing relationship with its clients. Software Development Company has a clear policy of employing only the very best in their field. Over one hundred IT professionals who have graduated from the top Australian national universities most of whom hold MS/BS degree in technology and science form the software development team. Many of team members are certified by IT industry leaders such as Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, IBM, CISCO etc. They also have a deep understanding and intensive skills and deep knowledge both in cutting edge information technology, business areas and customer care. Team members are creative thinkers, and they are comfortable with solving complex problems. The company has one of the lowest personnel turnover rates in Australia owing to the excellent conditions the staff work under which not only provide a good working environment but also an opportunity for the staff to exploit their potential and explore their creativity. Members of staff are also able to produce products for different parts of the world this is due to their high level of experience in producing software in English, German and French. The company has further put in place effective HR policies, collaboration with top technical universities and a compelling social package. Software development company has a vision for integrity which is demonstrated through Honesty in how the company deals with its clients, how members of staff deal with each other each other and how all stakeholders deal with the world. The company also places a high premium on candour which is seen in them being open and upfront in all their communications and keeping clients updated on the real situation. To ensure that they deliver on their contracts in good time, the company encourages employees to deal with situations early; in order to avoid last minute surprises. Deadlines are not negotiable in SDC and the client has to receive their orders on or before the date agreed upon at any cost. Another principle espoused by SDC is service, this is seen when the company seeks to empower and enable its clients. Members of staff and the entire SDC fraternity consider themselves successful not when we deliver their client’s final product but when the product is launched and meets success. Members of staff are encouraged and motivated to go the extra mile. Speak the truth with grace. Deliver more than is expected or promised. As a show of competence, the company only benchmarks with the best in the business. It tries new and better things, to ensure their customers always get the better services every time they come back. Software Development Center seeks to multiply what it has in terms of wealth, skills, influence, and also help improve their client’s business Company history The company was founded in 2005 as Sydney Gaming Solutions an Australian IT software development service provider. It was staffed with experienced management and technical specialists. The company focused on long-term commitments providing its clients with cost-effective computer and other platforms gaming solutions, which are mainly comprised of online games. SDC also provided all stages of a product engineering lifecycle: from assisting in requirements definition, project analysis and planning through software development to QA, trainings and maintenance. In 2006. Sydney Gaming Solutions was renamed into Software Development Center, a global gaming solutions provider and a software development company. The company staffs its teams from one of the richest and deepest IT talent pools in all of in the entire world. This can be shown by the fact that more than 80% of our staff has 9 or more years experience in the IT industry and the remaining 20% are the brightest and most creative young talent. Clients’ perspective on quality Different quality scholars have come up with observations on how software quality should be determined. Deming noted the difficulty in defining quality as the need to translate the customer’s future needs into characteristics that can be measured in order for the software to be designed to the customer’s satisfaction and be done at a price the customer would be willing to pay. Determination of this is difficult, especially in the software industry due to rapid changes in customer needs and also the capacities of the competition (Deming, 1988). Juran (1988) views the term quality as having multiple meanings, the meaning comprise of the product features which meet customer needs and thereby provide customer satisfaction, he further states that quality allows freedom from deficiencies and summarizes the definition of quality as ‘fitness for use’. Among the stakeholders whose views were sought regarding this report were SDC existing and potential clients with a view of establishing what their understanding of quality is. Most clients leave the bulk of work in determining whether software products are of good quality to their in house IT experts. On the whole, they indicated that in determining the quality of software, they attempted to quantify the extent to which it possesses desirable characteristics. It is important to measure software quality in order to manage costs, this is because software with good structure costs less to maintain and can be understood easily or changed if need arises as it often does. Good software designs also help in ensure that companies do not loose data as a result of corrupt software or security breaches, this is particularly important in the gaming industry which is SDC’s main client. Kitchenham and Pfleeger (1996) list down five perspectives of software quality. These include the transcendental perspective which is described as something strived towards as an ideal but may never be completely implemented. Quality in its transcendental perspective is difficult to describe but it is easy to point out when one sees it. From a user perspective, the concern is on how appropriate the software is for the user’s context and it is, this perspective of quality is therefore used to check whether a product meets the needs of the customer. Kitchenham and Pfleeger (1996) further look at quality from a product perspective which says that quality of a product can be noted through measurement of the product’s inherent characteristics. There also is quality according to manufacturing standards and how well the manufacturing process conforms to standards which are normally based on standards organizations. While most clients are aware of all the above parameters used in the measurement of quality, the clients take on software quality conforms almost exactly with the Consortium for IT Software Quality (CISQ) quality model (CISQ, 2009). In the survey on clients as important stakeholders, they state that software quality should be determined in the following:- 1. Efficiency:- The software architecture and source code should be made in such a way that the application performs with a great deal of efficiency. They should ensure that there is no degradation of response time, thus reducing the harm that may otherwise be caused to the client businesses. This is especially true in the highly competitive gaming industry where speed and efficiency are paramount. 2. Reliability:- Reliable software is one with a low likelihood of failure it has less downtime thus ensuring smooth running of the processes for which it was developed thus helping in ensuring that the whole organization works efficiently and vindicating the incorporation of the said software in the workings of the organization. Downtime in the gaming industry portends a total loss for client organizations due to the fact that the games played in clients’ establishments cannot be played any other way. 3. Security:- The software architecture and code should be written in such a way that there would be no breaches to security in the system. They should be subjected to rigourous tests to establish their resistance to hacking, rest someone hacks into the system and causes some people to win or lose unfairly. 4. Maintainability:- This is important in the entire software industry, owing to the rapidly changing needs for software. The software developed, according to customers, should be easy to maintain in case of breakdowns and also to improve when the situation demands that it be improved. Software needs to be responsive to measures driven by the gaming business and evolving customer demands. The design should have sufficient foresight to anticipate the way demands are likely to go, therefore, allowing for improvement of the code accordingly. Client’s needs The project leading to this review was for development of triangulation games software which would make it possible to play different combinatorial games which would be played against the computer or with other players. The system was also meant to be a platform for the definition of new types of triangulation games. The software was to make it possible to play multiple triangulation games which would show a graphic user interface while ensuring that the game is mainly controlled by use or mouse or the keyboard as a secondary control device. The client also needed the system to implement and also ensuring that the code would also allow the game to be easily modified incase the client needs it to be so modified making whatever games that may be added to the platform selectable through the graphic user interface. The software main user class was to be the players and design of the interface would be geared towards serving the player. Due to variance in the players’ level of skills the games would be designed in such a way that it catered for all categories of players, allowing players to start the game at the levels of their competence. Implementation of the software was to be using a Java-platform. This would make it possible to run the games on different system environments without having to modify the code. The clients also required documentation to define how new games would be provided in order to make it possible for non-developers to create games for the system. Documentation was also to be provided in the form of user manual for the products’ end users as well as a maintenance manual that would target end users and developers. Process adopted in identifying causes for delivering the product over-budget This project was a partial failure, owing to the fact that it did not meet its costs requirements. This is shown by the fact that, delivery of the project was done at a loss. The much cited article by May (2009) on major causes of software project failures was used as a guide in the enquiry. The questions were, however adapted to the situation at hand. The enquiry went through the process of developing the software and systematically assessing it from the moment the order was placed to delivery of the product. From the enquiry, it was determined that although user input was eventually sufficient, it took a lot of back and forth to eventually get it right. This cost the project a lot of money and time. In order to deliver the product on time after the time allocated had been eaten into by user engagement, additional staff had to be hired, further eating into the budget allocated for the project. It was also realized that the client company did not have a clear idea of exactly what they wanted the product, for which they had commissioned SDC, to do. This contributed to numerous consultations with would be users of the product. Although these consultations were done at the client’s expense they also contributed to wastage of precious time further necessitating the need for more staff in order to comply with SDC’s strict requirements that all products be delivered to the clients exactly the date agreed upon if not before. Vagueness of these requirements also led to certain modules of the code being discarded after the true picture of what the client wanted is eventually understood. This led to increase of the final budget which led to the entire project being concluded at a loss for SDC. The vagueness and back and forth between different stakeholders led to conflict which made it difficult for them to communicate in a constructive way and in good time, such communication would, probably have allowed the clients and SDC to engage constructively. It was also noted that, although schedule estimation was well done, cost estimation was not done in a way allowing for the possibility of disruptions and other time consuming activities that were not essential to delivery of the project (Jones, 1996). Quality function deployment house of quality QFD is meant to help the teams designing a product have a clear understanding of what they are designing which should be in line with what the end users expect from it. It translates the desires of customers into design characteristics in the entire development process (Rosenthal 1992). The QFD translates subjective quality criteria into quantifiable, and measurable goals which can then be used to determine where priorities ought to be assigned in product development (Riley 1999). Cost categories for software development The cost categories that were used in this project included man-hours which was badly affected by the overall delays occasioned by the problems encountered as explained above. The other categories included materials, establishment charges, depreciation of tools and time, interest factor, licenses and permits and taxes profit margin. The classification tree for costs was as follows. Fig 1: Classification of costs Recommendations In order for the project to be implemented successfully, user input should be shared with SDC personnel as opposed to the current situation where it was brought to SDC by the client; this led to a reduction in the fidelity of the information so presented. Presentation of the information directly to the software developer will reduce the cost of production by ensuring the man-hours in the original plan are not increased thus causing overshooting of the budget. Time should also be taken to ensure that the requirements presented by the client are made clear in order to prevent a situation where already developed code has to be discarded due to inadequacy in relation to what the customer needs. These needs should be verified a set number of times after they have been presented by a set number of people representing the client to a set number of people representing the developer. Such a number should not, in either of the cases be less than three people. Before development of the code begins in earnest, the facts should be verified again in order for the code developed to be representative of what the client desires. A clearly set vision of what the software in question should accomplish would greatly reduce conflict if, however, a misunderstanding arises, mechanisms should be put in place to ensure that SDC will not operate at a loss. Regarding the development process, the normal online games developed by SDC follow more or less the same process from concept development to deployment as shown in the diagram below. It therefore does not require any radical changes in the process itself but only enhancements in the process when it comes to bespoke software development Fig 2: Development process References CISQ 2009 Executive Forums Report Deming, W.E 1988. Out of the crisis: quality, productivity and competitive position. Cambridge University Press. Jones, C 1996. Patterns of Software Systems Failure and Success, International Thompson Computer Press, Boston, Mass. Juran, J, M. 1988 Juran's Quality Control Handbook. McGraw-Hill. Kitchenham, B and Pfleeger, S. 1996 Software quality: the elusive target. Software, IEEE, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 12–21. May, L. 2009 Major causes of software project failures. The Journal of Defense Software Engineering. Vol 15, No 16 pp 18-23. Rosenthal, S. R. 1992 Effective product design and development, How to cut lead time and increase customer satisfaction. Business One Irwin, Homewood, Illinois 60430. Reilly, N. B. 1999 The Team based product development guidebook, ASQ Quality Press. Milwaukee Wisconsin. Read More