Shaikh Sonny Aman’s Blog

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Implementing a software Process: Example with case study

Posted on | March 11, 2008 |

Three practical process example. Please don’t take these personally, take it as a case study:

1. Once I was in a software company which used to be one of the renowned ones. They had about 50 tech stuffs and had a very good process.

But, unfortunately they used that single process for all of projects despite of their various size and nature and when their working people dropped to 6/ 7 they still sticked to this heavy process. The process seemed like a hammer to break a nut. People had to maintain lengthy time consuming process to communicate even in a very time constraint project.

Funny is that, I was put into work after days of ‘training’ on company rules and policy book and with a very
high level overview of my current project but at the first day with my team, I asked one of my mets, what to do? He explained me in a very low voice and plead me with a fright in the eyes not tell anyone that he briefed me !! Why ? It is beyond the company rule to transfer knowledge unless he is officially assigned (well documented assignment, approval etc).

Rather funny is that we had to prepare task mega list, task lists etc taking days together what we hardly needed in development. We used our own ‘non-standard’ task lists. The task list were mainly for the CEO who strongly believes there should be a process and he knew only a single process (I admit that process was quite perfect for large, offshore projects).

Besides, we had a theoretically short but practically lengthy or unreal way to prepare PCL(Project cost log).

About testing, there is a test team with test pcs and people. Now, the back end developers used accused for every front end look&feel issues cause the front end used to prepare by a senior stuff and perhaps the  qa+test manager  could not understand whats the difference between front end and backend. No testing was required or even asked ever for the back end components and modules as the qam had hardly any knowledge on technology, I appreciate his honesty, he admitted. Anyway, what I feel only smoke test using the UI is not enough and also I feel the qa+test managers should have atleast minimum development knowledge to understand the project.

2. In another company where is I was in was Enosis( calling out the name, as saying something good :P). The process slim and fit. It evolved with the stuffs feedback and what they feel to have. Nice interpersonal communication. For development, we had barely and paper process. We used to sit together with the tech lead( Why all the good tech lead are little bulky ;) ) who is very friendly. The project manager had always direct communication with the stuffs.

The developers are never had to think about the preparing any doc which is not related to directly their work. The managerial stuffs used to do those.

For pcl, the company believed on the developers, we had to just put how long we worked today on an MS excel sheet. The manager knew precisely who is working what and did his job.

The manager demander that he knew the least amount of development knowledge using the technologies used in the project. But, there were hardly any ‘lucky’ bad programing practice could scape unnoticed by him.

3. Presently I am Trippert labs. It is a very new (and small so far) office and developers here very independent. Teams are spread across the globe. So, we can work at home if we have a personal prob on office time. We can even play Table tennis at office time, have two double beds in ‘Green room’ if we need a nap or think quietly. Thing is that freedom prevails every where but the developers are sincere,smart and dedicated.

Even though process is required. And part of my job is to maintain a process. We usually maintain google doc with the foreign offices for our project status. But  developers hardly  uses that, naturally. I found it most difficult to impose a process.  I know ,  you may say, use an  Agile ! But still that is a harness. So, I keep my keen eyes on each developer for any problem they face to manage their task. We discovered that some tasks are unnoticed. Now I took the chance to take the first step. We now use one of the big white board to write our individual tasks, status,issue, what’s next for each team. Everybody is happy. Now, step by step we will adopt additional system to develop a process which fits the need.

( In the coming days, I would be asking you lots of question to build up the process for us.. wont you help me ?! :)  )

That is my point. We have to remember, a process is often a journey and not a destination. And imposing a process  on the people may often  hamper the product ( though I know there might be some hard nuts among the developers).

Category: Project Management, SQA, Software Engineering

Comments

5 Responses to “Implementing a software Process: Example with case study”

  1. Implementing a software Process: Example with case study
    March 11th, 2008 @ 7:41 pm

    [...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptOnce I was in a software company which used to be one of the renowned ones. They had about 50 tech stuffs and had a very good process. But, unfortunately they used that single process for all of projects despite of their various size … [...]

  2. Offshore Software Development
    March 13th, 2008 @ 6:02 pm

    Wow! amazing site.

  3. Shaikh Sonny Aman
    March 13th, 2008 @ 8:49 pm

    Thank you :)

  4. PSP Blogger
    April 6th, 2008 @ 12:32 pm

    Fortunately, it’s still funny.

  5. Danny Tuppeny
    April 9th, 2008 @ 2:05 am

    Sir, yes sir! I’m agreeing with you, but I don’t think everybody do. You should not be so rude, it frightens of.

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