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CTO Connection
Chad Dickerson
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Build better software
WRITING SOFTWARE is very, very hard and I hate to disappoint everyone, but in my opinion, there is little hope that software development practices will take us much farther in the next 10 years than they have in the past 10. Each year since 1994, the Standish Group has released its Chaos Study, a sort of "state of the union" of corporate software development practices. In 1994, the first results indicated an industry in disarray: Only 16 percent of software development projects finished on time, within budget, and with the full functionality initially planned at the project's outset. The most recent results of the study for 2000 showed significant improvement for this metric -- all the way up to 28 percent.
I can only imagine how my parents would have reacted if after scoring a 16 percent on an exam early in the school year, I had run home beaming with an improvement to 28 percent. About the only profession where 28 percent is passable is baseball, and it's not necessarily a ticket to the all-star team. (OK, Mark McGwire's lifetime batting average is .265.) Regardless, in the final analysis, instead of 84 percent of software projects failing, we're down to 72 percent. This is nothing to be proud of for anyone involved in the business of software development.
What's the solution to this generally unmitigated failure? There is certainly no shortage of methodologies to choose from, including relatively new "light" ones such as Extreme Programming (XP), SCRIUM, and Adaptive Software Development (often grouped under the term "Agile Methodologies"), along with the old standbys -- OPP (Object-Oriented Programming), top-down design, and good ol' procedural programming. My frequent strolls through the programming section at the local bookstore suggest that another primary methodology these days might be MLBW (May the Largest Book Win), followed closely by 21D or "21 days," methodology, where you can learn systems administration, any enterprise database, or a complex programming language in just 21 days. (Imagine how you would feel if your dentist had a "Learn How to Drill Patients' Teeth in 21 Days" book prominently displayed in the waiting room. Ouch.)
Personally, I lean in the direction of the thinking set forth by the Agile Alliance, an umbrella group consisting of proponents/inventors of a number of the "light" methodologies I mentioned above. In its manifesto (see www.agilealliance.org), Agile states that it values "individuals and interactions over process and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, [and] responding to change over following a plan."
In this era of constant change and ever-changing requirements, that mode of thinking makes a lot of sense. The only problem I have with the general precepts of these methodologies is the implicit notion that businesspeople and technologists are necessarily separate entities forced to mingle for software projects. One of the principles of the Agile Alliance is, "Businesspeople and developers must work together daily throughout the project." If you've read this column before, you know that I've written that a CTO's primary role is making sure that technology serves the needs of the business. In that spirit, I think businesspeople and developers should strive to work together daily -- even when there is no particular project to tackle. Every developer in your company should have a sense of what makes your company successful, whether that means widgets sold, services provided, or code written. As business increasingly becomes technology and technology dissolves into business, the distinction between the two becomes increasingly irrelevant. Bridging this gap is the only hope for building better software.
Chad Dickerson is InfoWorld's CTO. Contact him at chad_dickerson@infoworld.com.
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