"Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up." – Ernest Hemingway
June 3, 2012 Leave a comment
This is a good discussion of an article discussing how process is killing your business. I have worked in process improvement and quality assurance for software engineering companies and see how too much process sometimes suffocates project team members and cramps innovation. Sometimes too much time is spent on managing and controlling process, and not enough on how to improve their products and create new and improved functions.
May 21, 2012 Leave a comment
Crashing and fast tracking are two techniques used to help get a project back on schedule in the event the schedule begins to slip. When using either technique, you should know what your critical path is.
Crashing a project means to throw additional resources at the critical path. If you have one person working on a 10 day task, you might throw one or two more people onto the task to help speed up its completion. The risk is you may assign additional resources with limited tools to complete the task, keeping you from reaching a high level of efficiency. With the scenario where you crash the schedule, you may be adding a resource to work 5 days, and only shorten the task completion by 2 days. It is not the most efficient, but it is a tradeoff that sometimes is worth the risk.
Sometimes I like to think of crashing as what road construction crews seem to think they are doing. You need to dig a hole but there is only enough room for two people to do it, but there always seems to be ten guys standing around waiting to help not sure of how to fit in. In an effective scenario, think of when you were a child and had a party when your parents were not home. You enlist your siblings and friends to help you clean. You are crashing the activity with more resources to complete it faster.
Fast tracking is when you look at activities on a schedule that are normally done in sequential order and instead try to work on them in parallel. You may only be able to partially work on them in parallel, but you are trying to save any time that you can. An example is, you normally don’t create the solution until the design is completed. When fast tracking, you may start the solution before the full design is completed. You jump to the next phase before the current phase is completed. Major risks include increased cost and possible rework later on.
A real-life example of fast tracking are the crazy morning drivers on their way to work that are drinking coffee, shaving, and reading the newspaper at the same time. I find myself in the kitchen prepping breakfast running the coffee machine, the toaster, and the frying pan to cook some eggs and bacon; all simultaneously to cook my breakfast faster.
So in summary, the main difference is crashing a project involves adding resources to a single activity, and fast tracking involves working on sequential activities in parallel.
References
Marchewka, J. (2009). Information Technology Project Management (3rd Ed). John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ.
Retrieved from: http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-6144481.html
Retrieved from: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/fast-track-tasks-to-shorten-your-project-schedule-HA010036399.aspx
Retrieved from: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/about-project-crashing-shortening-a-project-schedule-HA010036416.aspx
Retrieved from: http://www.brighthub.com/office/project-management/articles/5055.aspx
May 3, 2012 Leave a comment
There are several places where you can find information on developing a software maintenance strategy.
Two common software process models are ITIL and CMMI. ITIL is a set of best practices for IT services. If your organization provides IT services, including providing a service desk, ITIL helps to provide practices to help them develop their strategy (ITIL, 2012). CMMI is a process improvement framework that can be used for both development and maintenance organizations. CMMI’s goals are to identify strengths and weaknesses and to turn those weak process areas into strengths (SEI, 2012). Determining your approach comes from what the goals of the client are for their product. ITIL and CMMI can help.
For a set of standards, you can look to ISO. ISO/IEC 14764:2006 provides details for the management of software maintenance applications, including for planning, execution and control, review and evaluation, and closure of the maintenance process (ISO, 2011). It can work for managing one or more maintenance projects.
IBM created a report on best practices for software maintenance for operating data warehouses. The importance of a study like this is with the increase in Cloud computing. Cloud related products would have to increase the size or quantity of data warehouses as a client moves to use contractors to store their data and applications (IBM, 2005). If you are such a contractor, this is a good resource to help develop a strategy. This can also be helpful for other application types that conduct maintenance with an impact on several applications or services.
References
ITIL. (2012). What is ITIL? Retrieved from: http://www.itil-officialsite.com/AboutITIL/WhatisITIL.asp.
Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute. (2012). CMMI Overview. Retrieved from: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/.
International Organization for Standardization. (2011). ISO/IEC 14764:2006. Retrieved from: http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=39064.
IBM. (2005). Data Warehouse Software Maintenance Strategy. Retrieved from: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/data/pubs/papers/dw-maint-strategy.pdf.
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