Slim down your software
A new Forrester report says to forget the "enterprise" and shoot for a leaner, meaner software development process.
Follow @infoworldWe hear a lot about the so-called epidemic of obesity in America today. Well, according to a new report from Forrester Research, the plague extends to software development, too.
You're probably aware of the symptoms: Software projects become weighted down with feature creep and mired in impractical, inefficient development processes. Applications that were once svelte, purpose-built solutions become unrecognizable beneath layers of unsightly bloat.
[ Bloated code can hurt your company in more ways than one. InfoWorld's Paul Krill talks to industry leaders about how they manage application development efforts in "Avoiding the high cost of bad code" ]
But spring is right around the corner, and Forrester says it's not too late for your apps to ditch the muumuu and get back into shape. The solution is something Forrester is calling lean software -- and the good news is that you're probably using some of its tools and principles already. The bad news? On your new weight-loss plan, the word "enterprise" is a no-no.
Behavior change, not dieting
If slimming down your software is among your New Year's resolutions, the first thing to do is to take inventory of your current software development practices and see what needs changing. According to the Forrester report, a number of common patterns contribute to software bloat.
Binging on features is the first and most obvious problem. It happens on many levels. Customers regularly demand new features, while software developers often feel compelled to build new features into existing applications simply to justify their annual budgets. Meanwhile, tools vendors are similarly building more and more new features into their platforms as part of their annual sales and upgrade cycles, which in turn inspire customers to create more new features of their own, and so on.
Consolidation among tools vendors often exacerbates this problem. When one vendor acquires another, the capabilities of the two product lines are often merged, and sales staffs are encouraged to "up-sell" the new features to the original product's customer base.
What all this feature creep means is that your applications inevitably drift ever further away from the original business cases that inspired them. Worse, as software grows more complex, it requires more maintenance, inviting still more cooks to come and ladle still more calories into the broth.
