The most powerful step in software development

What’s the most powerful step in a software development process? It’s not uncommon for analysts to label steps in a process. The critical path, bottlenecks, waste, and non-essential steps come to mind.  So I would say that common wisdom agrees that all steps in a process do not hold equal weighting of importance. Maybe [...]

Software Release Management. It’s more than an IT thing.

This is about IT and Business alignment. I’m fortunate enough to have worked in two different functional areas of a business: IT and Marketing. I can say with 100% confidence that business owners and stakeholders of software releases should be more concerned and involved in the IT release management process. The typical release process covers [...]

Where operations, projects, and innovation collide and divide

To build it or to maintain it. That is the question. It’s a classic question in organizational design. The answer of course is you have to do both. I’m not talking about the decision of a product nearing the end of its life cycle where you decide between adding additional features or putting it in [...]

How the waterfall method effects the PMO

I’ve used the term “Big Bang Software Development” to describe a process where all of the software project scope is delivered at the same time. Traditionally it’s been called the waterfall model.  Industry experts have compared the waterfall model to newer agile methodologies for how they differ in the approach to deliver software.  But what about [...]

Are you hiding behind the process?

Some people depend on the process for making results. I was involved in a situation recently where a software defect was found after the production release. A team member was quick to analyze the situation and indicated that the team had not followed all the steps in the process. They stated that this resulted in [...]