What Top Management Needs to Know About IT

What Top Management Needs to Know About IT

Stephan Schmidt, Vice CTO, brands4friends

Me Stephan Schmidt Vice CTO brands4friends

@codemonkeyism

Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT


What Top Management Needs to Know About IT



Top

Man

agem

ent

IT

GAP

Dragons

Voodoo

Black Magic

?

That’s wrong! Can’t manage Hidden risks


What should you ask? What should a CEO ask his CTO? (VP Engineering, Lead developer, …)


Stuff that risks your business or has huge revenue impact.


Green Shifting.


Questions to ask?


What is our largest risk?


How many SPOFs do you have? (People and technology)


When was your last Backup? Where is it? When has it been tested the last time?


When will we hit the wall?


KPI/ SLA •  Availability •  Bugs in Release •  Bugs found before •  Time to Market •  Do we hit (when?) the wall?


War on Talent


Do not hire IT personal if you don’t know what you do.


When your recruiting pipeline is empty

3 months recruiting + 3 months notice period + 1 current month = 7 months from need to filled


Very good developers are 20% more expensive, but 2000% more productive.


30-50% of programmers with programming experience can not program. Cargo Cultists.


Do not let anyone here developers without a coding test.


Development is a solved problem


Time Scope

Resources ($$$)

Kanban (Lean)

Waterfall

Agile (Scrum)


Time to market => more money


Time to Market Largest lever NOT in development. Largest lever in decision phase.


Front-up

Development Start

Development

Everyone focuses here

Problems are here

Idea

1 women needs 9 months to deliver a baby. 9 women do deliver a baby in 1 month.


Time Time

1. Feature

2. Feature

3. Feature

4. Feature

5. Feature

1. F

eatu

re

2. F

eatu

re

3. F

eatu

re

4. F

eatu

re

5. F

eatu

re

Parallel Serial Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

MarketOpportunity

Feeling of urgency

Time relative to competitor Reinertsen 1998


Top Managementpossible impact

Reinertsen 1998

Attention of top management for a

project


Productivity


The most important factor in software work is the quality of the programmers.


The best programmers are up to 28 times better than the worst programmers.


Developers need 15 minutes to reach the ZONE.


Site note: No telephones.


Tools.


No silver bullet.


Performance



Time

Scope


Time

Scope


Time

Scope

∞

Technical Debt


Time

Technical Debt


Time

Technical Debt

WALL

Rewrite



Work left to do

Time

Pressure

TechnicalDebt


Time

Lines of Code

Ok

BAD

GOOD

How long does it take?


Software estimation is usually done by the wrong people.


4x

0,25x

1x

Cone of Uncertainty

Time

Steve McConnell

Software Complete

Initial Idea

Requirements Complete

UI Complete

Detailed DesignComplete



4x

0,25x

1x

Bad Cone of Uncertainty

Time

Steve McConnellInitial Idea

Requirements Complete

Estimation/Time

Probability

10% 50% 90%

1. August1. July 1. October


Time or Effort

Probabilityof Completion

100%

Point in Time X


Brooks Law: Adding people to a late project makes it later.


DON’T FORGET! Maintenance typically consumes 40 to 80 percent of software costs.


Thanks! Questions? @codemonkeyism [email protected]


Sources


“Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art”, Steve McConnell

“Developing Products in Half the Time”,

Donald G. Reinertsen “The Mythical Man-Month”,

Frederick P. Brooks “Peopleware”,

Tom DeMarco

Technology

What Top Management Needs to Know About IT