Strategies and Trends for Information Technology Leaders
Unfortunately, just as in the case of Toyota and GM, U.S. companies aren’t often built for change. Commitments to empowered teams, quality, and constant improvement are more than just a checklist of to-dos. These commitments require early buy-in from top to bottom, and a near religious zeal in doing processes the right way — regardless…
by Nate McKie of Asynchrony Solutions Over the last five years, Asynchrony has been successfully utilizing Agile and Lean methodologies within software development processes for both internal work and on client projects. While the processes themselves are fairly straightforward, we found that there are significant cultural and organizational challenges that must be addressed when transitioning…
by Niall Browne of LiveOps As our personal and professional lives become more intertwined, the amount of digital data stored and accessed by companies, their employees and staff is staggering. From banking records to medical information, personal identifiers and business transaction histories, a treasure trove of sensitive information is a tempting target to cybercrooks. Moreover,…
It is well-known that as software projects grow in size, their probability of failure escalates dramatically. (For our purposes here, “failure” means failing to meet its objective, either by being scrapped, or by the goals being substantially scaled back. A lesser form of failure is when the project drags out far beyond its original time…
This series of five articles takes a closer look at software development, the reasons for failure and how to avoid them. The previous article in this series dealt with the importance of project requirements. Once you have that nailed down, it is time to select the development methodology. While there are many different methods to…
There is a lot of buzz around the use of Agile methodologies for software development, and Agile is providing quantifiable benefits for companies engaged in large-scale development projects. By applying Agile principles, software development executives have reported multiple benefits, including higher quality software, a product that “hits the mark” in terms of meeting business requirements,…
Last time, I suggested that the obvious analogy between IT architecture and real building architecture was potentially flawed, because of the dramatic differences in their medium of expression, and that another analogy (with music) might be more appropriate in some ways. The real lesson, though, is that all such analogies have serious limitations. While these…