| This book describes observations made over a period of ten years in
projects and organizations involved in the field of Information Technology
(IT), focusing on the areas of software development and maintenance. It
highlights the most frequently encountered problems because of poor
processes, the term process being defined as the way material and human
resources, methods, procedures, and tools are integrated in order to
achieve a given objective. It also provides recommendations in the form
of critical practices to implement to achieve successful delivery of software
products and services.
These observations were compiled as part of an initiative started by
GRafP Technologies in the 1990s to study risk in areas where there is a
high level of human involvement. For example, train accidents mostly
occur as a result of human inattention, not because mechanical parts fail.
This is precisely what we, at GRafP Technologies, wanted to analyze and
quantify, particularly the thousands of interactions that lead to deterioration
of a situation, often to the point of generating a crisis.
Because our company has been involved in IT for many years, it is
the field we selected to perform our investigation. We conducted comprehensive
assessments and 40 of those constitute the source of information
on which this book is based. Software development and maintenance
offered us an endless source of material. For example, development
environments riddled with defects, innumerable crashes (the dreaded
message, “This program has performed an illegal operation and will be
shut down. If the problem persists, contact the program vendor), incompatible
versions, problems mysteriously appearing and disappearing,
requirements that kept changing depending on the mood of the development
team leader, release of improperly tested products to beat competitors,
the shame felt by the development team when customers found
the residual defects, suppliers unable to deliver on time, and the list goes
on. In other words, institutionalized chaos: yet chaos that led to innovations
rarely seen in any other industry. |
