As my colleague Brian Finnerty pointed out in his recent blog, we’re continuing our webinar series on Managing Application Development Teams & Software Projects with a webcast entitled Legacy System Migration to .NET on Thursday April 14th 2:00 PM Eastern/11:00 AM Pacific. Our guests on this occasion are the global healthcare company, Cerner Corporation.

In hosting these webinars, our goal is to make common software management issues as real as possible and to offer thoughts and strategies that might be relevant to you in your work. We are also keen to share “war stories” that make the issues come alive. We’re extremely lucky to have Cerner’s Matt Anderson and Ryan McKenna joining us for this webinar. They were both deeply involved in the project to migrate a key product from a legacy system to the .NET framework and the challenges associated with that process.

When I do my own preparation for these webinars I like to find an angle that allows me to open the issues up. For this webinar, I discovered a Department of Defence white paper on Legacy System Migration Guidelines. Since DoD systems contain a substantial amount of legacy software and they have worked with many vendors to carry out migrations, they have evolved 10 guidelines which are built on lessons learned from actual legacy system migrations. On first reading, some of these guidelines are blindingly obvious. For example, guideline #1 recommends that you “Develop a comprehensive strategy with achievable and measurable milestones for each reengineering project”. Indeed — you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to agree with that one!

But some of the guidelines, when matched with the key approaches of the Cerner strategy, are really quite interesting and thought provoking. A couple of weeks ago, I spent a day with Cerner in Kansas City at their Innovation Center. We allocated one session to preparation for the webinar on Legacy System Migration to .NET. I was very struck during the meeting by the “Like-For-Like” strategy adopted by Cerner for the project. It’s not as simple as it sounds. Just think about it — you have a core product with many customers and users. It is a key revenue generator for the company. It has been developed over years. Now you need to move it to a new technology base. You decide on a “like-for-like” strategy, which means matching function for function, feature for feature. An ideal outcome would mean that users are not even aware of the change. But we all live and work in software. We know how products develop, how the outcome can change – sometimes in unexpected ways.

Then compare this decision with guidelines 4, 5 and 6 from the DoD white paper:

Guideline #4: Establish and maintain configuration management control of the legacy system
Guideline #5: There should be a carefully defined and documented process for the elicitation and validation of requirements
Guideline #6: Make software architecture a primary reengineering consideration

These three guidelines raise a ton of questions for me, which make the project, and decision-making around it, come alive. For example,
1. How are requirements for the new system documented?
2. Is the original architecture still valid under the new technology?
3. If not, what needs to change and what implications does it have for the project?
4. Does anything get dropped in the new system? What about the little funky features that wend their way into all products?
5. What about improvements and new features? Do they wait until the migration is done?

During the live webinar on April 14th, I will also ask our guest speakers about DoD guideline #3, which is near and dear to our hearts at InnerWorkings:

Guideline #3: If new technology is used for a project, provide adequate training in both the technical content and the motivation for change

The list of questions could go on – but the point is that these are real migration issues that Cerner grappled with, decided upon, and then executed against.

It is worth noting that Cerner’s migration project is complete now so we will also be able to talk about specific outcomes and lessons learned. The webcast will run for about 40 minutes and we will have a live Q&A after that where you can ask your own questions. So do join us. It promises to be a really interesting session.

I’m pleased to announce that we’re continuing our popular webcast series on Managing Application Development Teams & Software Projects. You can register for our upcoming webcast titled Legacy System Migration to .NET on Thursday April 14th 2:00 PM Eastern/11:00 AM Pacific.

We’ll explore the challenge of migrating pieces of your core software systems — essential to your company’s business — to the .NET Framework. Imagine overcoming this challenge when your software development organization is distributed across 8 global centers and supports more than 70 core systems.

How can you make it work? Find out how a major global healthcare company, Cerner Corporation, managed this tricky process. The company leveraged the new capabilities offered by the .NET Framework using an incremental rollout, and used several key migration strategies including:

• Center of Excellence for developer learning needs
• Open Forum to foster software team collaboration
• “Like for Like” development strategy

Come to this one-hour webcast to dig deep into this migration process, including results, productivity gains, reduced learning curve, and best practices for future migration projects.

The webcast is free, but seats are limited. Sign up today!

San Francisco, CA – Jan 31, 2011 – InnerWorkings announced today that it has signed an agreement with L&T Infotech to deliver its flagship product to enterprise developers through the L&T Infotech Developer & Platform Excellence Program.

The company will offer its entire catalog of .NET Framework coding challenges and performance support services to help L&T Infotech enhance developer skills. InnerWorkings Developer is scalable for geographically dispersed software teams, yet allows individual developers to receive in-depth feedback, code samples, and support.

“InnerWorkings is delighted to be chosen by L&T Infotech’s Developer & Platform Excellence team for this initiative,” said Mr. Francis McKeagney, CEO of InnerWorkings. “We are excited about working with L&T Infotech on our shared goal of driving .NET skills and programming excellence for enterprise developers on a large scale. InnerWorkings offers a best in class approach to improving developer performance and productivity within the enterprise. Developers gain validated programming skills with the very latest technologies while working almost exclusively in Visual Studio. We look forward to the successful execution of this strategic developer training program in conjunction with L&T Infotech.”

“L&T Infotech is committed to providing superior service to our customers by transforming knowledge into performance. We are pleased to see InnerWorkings as a key component of the L&T Infotech Developer and Platform Excellence Program. Developing effective software takes years of practice and experience accumulating techniques and tricks along the way. InnerWorkings allows us to provide our developers with this real-world experience in a safe sandbox, helping us to accelerate the delivery of higher quality solutions to our clients.” said Mr. Sudip Banerjee, CEO at L&T Infotech.

L&T Infotech developers will have access to InnerWorkings’ growing catalog of coding exercises on key technologies such as ASP.NET, .NET Framework 3.5x, AJAX Extensions, Visual Studio Team System, Silverlight, Enterprise Library, WPF, WCF and .NET Framework 4.0. Participating developers will also avail of InnerWorkings’ acclaimed code judging engine, Personal Tutor support service, full code search functionality, and the company’s extensive reference framework. The InnerWorkings learning environment is tightly embedded in Microsoft Visual Studio so developers can enjoy a more seamless and in-depth learning experience.

About InnerWorkings
At InnerWorkings, our mission is to help our customers build great software organizations. We believe that it is possible to create a successful, efficient, and cost-effective software organization and sustain it over multiple projects. How do we do this? By providing software executives with an integrated platform to improve learning, collaboration, and software processes across your development teams. InnerWorkings is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and Carnegie Mellon SEI Partner. The company’s R&D facility is based in Dublin, Ireland and InnerWorkings maintains its corporate headquarters in San Francisco, California. For more information about InnerWorkings and its services, visit www.innerworkings.com.

About L&T Infotech
Larsen & Toubro Infotech Ltd (L&T Infotech), one of the fastest growing IT Services companies, is ranked by NASSCOM as 8th largest Indian software & services exporter from India and is amongst NASSCOM’s Top 20 IT-BPO Employers in India (FY2009-10). It is also ranked 7th in DATAQUEST-IDC top 20 IT Best Employers Survey 2010. A wholly-owned subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro, a US$ 9.8 billion engineering, manufacturing & financial services organization with global operations, L&T Infotech is differentiated by its unique Business-to-IT Connect, which is a result of its rich corporate heritage.

We offer comprehensive, end-to-end software solutions and services in the following industry verticals: Banking & Financial Services; Insurance; Energy & Petrochemicals; Manufacturing (Consumer Packaged Goods/Retail, High-tech, Industrial Products,  Automotive), and Product Engineering Services (Telecom). Our new emerging verticals include Media & Entertainment and Life sciences & Healthcare. We also deliver business solutions to our clients in the following horizontals/Service Lines: SAP, Oracle, Infrastructure Management Services, Testing, Consulting and Business Process Services. Our other service offerings are: Business Analytics, Legacy Modernization, Applications Outsourcing, Architecture Consulting, Enterprise Integration, Service Oriented Architecture, Systems Integration and PLM. (www.Lntinfotech.com)

All products and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

The challenge of on-boarding new developers is likely to be with us for some time. The U.S. Labor Department reports that employment of computer software engineers is expected to swell by a whopping 295,200 jobs, or more than 32 percent, between 2008 and 2018.

Not many people graduate college with the skills necessary for professional expertise, and software engineering isn’t any different. Nothing beats the real world experience of writing code, making mistakes, researching solutions, and correcting your faults until you understand the technology.

Most on-boarding programs I’ve seen are instructional in nature. Many are simply “chalk and talk” sessions with a smattering of practical training on the side. To become a good developer, it’s not enough just to acquire knowledge, you have to know how and when to apply it.

The economic benefits of getting your on-boarding programs right are significant. Organizations that create effective programs can cut their time to competency rates in half. Many see the benefits realized in accelerated billable hours, reduced defect rates, reduced mentoring costs, and improved staff retention rates.

So here are some tips (excluding the standard, yet important, HR and policy stuff) from InnerWorkings’ experience of working with multi-national vendors who have implemented effective on-boarding programs for their developers.

1.  Develop a Competency Benchmark

Decide what makes sense as a minimum competency benchmark. Your learning programs should blend the intelligent application of proven principles, techniques, languages, and tools with company-specific needs and goals. I suggest that you consider the following:

• Deep understanding of object oriented programming techniques
• Strong grasp of web development fundamentals
• Foundation knowledge of design patterns & best practices

Perhaps most importantly, I urge you to ensure that your program is balanced between instructional and procedural learning. Practice greatly improves proficiency (WordNet 2.0, 2003 Princeton University) and Gartner’s research paper “Examining the Technology Adoption Learning Curve” (Mark Driver, 2005) estimated that 66% of the time it takes a developer to become proficient is spent “in the trenches”.

Rather than having new hires learn by making expensive mistakes on real projects, creating a program where new hires immediately get the opportunity to practice what is taught in the classroom significantly cuts time to competency and reduces your defect rates.

2.   Assign a Coach

When new hires join your team, assign a coach to the group who is responsible for ensuring that each new hire adapts quickly. Ideally, the coach should be a senior developer or software architect who can provide a technical mentoring facility to new hires. Providing mentoring through a scalable online or social networking platform will allow your mentor to service 30-50 new hires during the program.

3.  Make Your Team Leads Responsible

Making your team leads responsible for implementing learning plans to bring your new hire up to speed is critical. This plan should have clear goals on what each new developer is expected to accomplish within a specific time. I recommend that you review the learning plan with the new hire as well as with the people on their project teams.

4.  Plan for the Future

While the on-boarding program will focus on principle software concepts, most developers will want to develop their careers and specialize in a functional area of development. My advice here is simple — don’t wait until another employer provides the opportunity. Talk to your developers, find out what areas they want to focus on, and plan for it. You will significantly improve your retention rates if you do this.

5. Build Community Around Your Developers

Software development is a knowledge intensive activity — if you’re a large employer, chances are you have pockets of domain expertise dispersed across the globe.  You should create a developer collaboration platform where openness is a strategic weapon to foster knowledge transfer between experienced and newbie developers. Connect these groups and you’ll see better results through code re-use, lower maintenance costs, and improved code quality. In addition, you’ll give junior developers and new hires a chance to learn from the best in your organization.

If you’d like more information on the topic of on-boarding new developers, please contact us at InnerWorkings. Good luck!

Last Friday, I attended the early morning sessions of an Ireland R&D Showcase run by IDA Ireland and Science Foundation Ireland at Stanford University in Palo Alto.

As the title suggests, the day was intended to showcase Ireland as a leading research & development hub for the new technologies that will shape the 21st century.

Among the topics discussed were the key factors influencing countries’ competitiveness in this century and the commitment required to fund core R&D, if jobs are to be created and protected in the face of rising global competitiveness.

Last weekend, I watched Fareed Zakaria’s GPS program on How to restore the American Dream (link opens podcast) so I was well primed for the urgency of the main topics. (This, by the way, is a program well worth watching and I will return to it in my next blog. While you’re at it, read his recent article of the same title in Time magazine.)

Ireland, through the IDA, has done a very good job in the past 30 years of attracting large American corporations to establish their European hubs in the country. The incoming companies mirror the latest technology trends — the first wave brought global manufacturing companies like Siemens, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer; did you know that all the Viagra in the world is manufactured in Ireland?

Technology giants like HP, Microsoft, and Intel came next, followed by global players in the biotech and financial services sectors. Today, companies such as Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook all have a significant presence in Ireland.

The fierce urgency of a small country’s need to stay competitive drives the strategy and is largely unobstructed by the different political philosophies at home. I think it is a good example of what can be achieved across normal political divides and the short-term thinking that drives day-to-day politics in any country.

The overarching vision is held in a government policy document called the Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation 2006-2013 (link opens PDF) which determines the direction and priorities. Two government agencies, backed by an array of state and private organizations, take the focus for implementing the policy decisions.

One agency, IDA Ireland, goes out to the global innovation centers and tries to attract the top companies to Ireland. A second agency, Enterprise Ireland, works in the opposite direction — connecting young and innovative Irish companies to the global markets.

It is a long-term approach which costs money and has to survive government change. I assume there is wastage in the system but it is impressive in its coherence and in its transparency.

So what were the key themes at the Ireland R&D Showcase? What jumped out for me was the central role of education. We are now moving into an era of highly complex and specialized research — nanotechnology, photonics, next-generation networks, cloud computing and so on.

Nations need to make the financial commitments to fundamental research on emerging technologies and knowledge domains. This research will drive the businesses and jobs of the future.

The next R&D wave is coming, and we all need to pay close attention to stay competitive. It has implications not just for countries but also for companies whose revenues depend on created intellectual property.

I was particularly impressed with the work of two research institutes attached to two Irish universities. One was CRANN, attached to Trinity College Dublin. This institute works across the research spectrum of nanotechnologies, from the development of new nanomaterials with improved mechanical, magnetic, electrical or optical properties to their subsequent application in electronic or medical devices, sensors, or new drug delivery systems.

The second was the Tyndall Institute, attached to University College Cork. The focus here is in the areas of photonics, electronics, and materials, as well as nanotechnologies, and their applications for life sciences, communications, power electronics and other industries. Both are world-class institutes, attracting top scientists from around the world and working closely with international market-leading companies to commercialize the latest research.

It was also impressive to me that Ireland, in the teeth of the biggest economic meltdown in the country’s history, was staying firmly focused on long-term success for its people.

You’ve probably heard all the talk this week about Silverlight’s future as a cross platform runtime.

Bob Muglia’s comments in a PDC10 article by Mary-Jo Foley titled Microsoft: Our strategy with Silverlight has shifted kicked off quite a firestorm of reactions from the developer community.

Earnest responses to Muglia’s announcement have veered from blithe indifference (move along, nothing to see here), to apoplectic anger (never trust Microsoft), to resigned acceptance (I told you this would happen).

Responding to the unexpected controversy, Muglia posted a detailed blog yesterday clarifying his thinking titled PDC and Silverlight. This post strikes an unusual tone between defending his original thesis  that HTML 5 is increasingly important to Microsoft while going to some lengths to assure people that Silverlight is still a core technology.

As the dust settles, I’m beginning to see the following themes emerge from this debate (my opinion only, of course):

• Microsoft is endorsing HTML 5 as the primary, most widely accepted web standard.
• This move has been brewing since HTML 5 support in IE9 was announced.
• HTML 5 has incredible reach but limited tooling (when compared to Silverlight).
• Silverlight has rich tooling but limited reach (when compared to HTML).
• Silverlight has a fine niche in enterprise line-of-business applications.
• Microsoft no longer sees Silverlight as the best runtime on all devices.
• Microsoft will release Silverlight 5; don’t know where, don’t know when…
• Reports of Silverlight’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
  

So much for my opinion. Why not get an expert’s perspective on Silverlight in the enterprise by listening to Mick Slattery, EVP of Avanade’s Global Delivery Network? You’re invited to join us for a live webcast covering Silverlight adoption at Avanade on Wednesday, November 3rd at 2 PM ET/11 AM PT.

Our speakers will discuss how Avanade drove widespread Silverlight adoption across their distributed software teams:

• Fran McKeagney - CEO, InnerWorkings
• Mick Slattery - EVP, Global Delivery Network, Avanade

You’ll hear about the wide array of ‘line of business’ and web facing applications Avanade has completed for its customers using Silverlight. We fully expect to receive audience questions on Silverlight’s future as a cross platform runtime, and where it stands as an enterprise development tool. Don’t miss your chance to participate in this lively debate — register now!

As someone who spends many an hour waiting at airport gates for delayed or canceled flights, I have come to appreciate the extraordinary array of free programming available to us all the time.

In the past few years, I have become an avid podcast listener and I’ve compiled a short list of the programs I have been listening to recently:

Could a Team of Trumpeters Really Bring Down the Walls of Jericho?

The Stuxnet Attacks and Cyber Warfare

Roy Blount Jr. on the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup

The Mysteries of the Brain

War may be a recurring theme with this particular selection – cyber, acoustic and the inimitable Marx Brothers’ variety – but my general intent is to pass on programs I have found interesting, entertaining or amusing.

I will continue to share new listening material from time to time — for those inevitable hours we all spend stuck in transit!

Happy listening,

Fran
InnerWorkings

I’m pleased to announce that InnerWorkings is continuing our thought leadership webcast series on Managing Application Development Teams and Software Projects.

Next in the series is a highly anticipated discussion on the Risks & Rewards of .NET Adoption in the Enterprise with one of our key customers, GE Healthcare — it’s scheduled for Tuesday, October 19th at 11 AM Pacific / 2 PM Eastern.

Ever wondered how a large, distributed software organization makes decisions about which development framework to adopt? GE Healthcare will be sharing their experiences of managing over 9 global development locations, and supporting a vibrant mix of programming technologies.

We’ll be discussing how to create an n-tiered, component based software architecture that supports their business vision. We will also explore the issue of preparing developers for .NET adoption in terms of licensing, the software roadmap, and key ramp up mechanisms.

In addition, we’ll be analyzing the risks and benefits of adopting .NET at GE Healthcare — what aspects exceeded expectations and what setbacks were encountered along the way. Lastly, the session will explore the road ahead in planning future .NET projects and taking advantage of the many new features available in C# and .NET 4.0.

It promises to be a fascinating session, so don’t miss out — join the live event on Tuesday, October 19th at 11 AM Pacific / 2 PM Eastern. If that time doesn’t work for you, just register now and you’ll be provided with a link to the on-demand version of the event once it has been archived.

Many thanks to the team at GE Healthcare for participating and we hope you enjoy the webcast.

I’ve always been interested in the economic impact of software development. While it can be extraordinarily expensive to build out a commercial software application, successful software products can achieve a scale that is simply staggering.

Think about the original code base for Google’s search service or Apple’s iTunes store, for example. Few could have envisaged the explosive growth that would accompany the development of these software services.

Both examples testify that a pure idea, disruptive in its nature and well executed in software, can go a long way indeed.

Technical debt

But it’s far too tempting to believe that you can build the “Next Great App”, ship it, and kick back to watch the revenue rolling in. As we know, the reality of maintaining, fixing, and updating software to support its lifetime value is a massive undertaking.

But is it possible to quantify this burden of “technical debt” — the cost to fix structural flaws that remain in the code when an application is released?

Software quality study

That’s why I was particularly interested in the 2010 CAST Worldwide Application Software Quality Study (link opens a PDF). CAST Research Labs specialize in the study of custom software development and they have compiled a dataset from over 500 applications.

I was really impressed by the range and depth of this study, involving 75 organizations across 8 industry segments. Data were collected over a period of 3 years and drawn from 288 applications built in North America, Europe, and India — it’s fair to say the results are broadly representative of the software industry as a whole.

For a good summary of the CAST report, I’d recommend the following SD Times article titled CAST puts a number on the cost of fixing code quality. The estimated cost to fix problems in an application once it is operational is particularly revealing, and it puts the cost of ownership for software applications into perspective:

If your organization has an application with approximately 374,000 lines of code, you can expect a technical debt of about US$1 million.

Security scores 

I was not surprised to read that COBOL scored highest in security and robustness, given the demands of financial services systems where mainframes dominate the picture. Clearly, mainframe systems are less open and exposed to the myriad of security threats that face web applications.

Perhaps more worrying was the abysmal security score attributed to .NET, with Java not far behind. Far more work needs to be done educating developers in the best practices of building secure applications — it’s no surprise that our web application security training generates plenty of demand from InnerWorkings clients:

Mainframe-based applications are less exposed to the security challenges posed to Web-facing applications. Nevertheless, the lower security scores for other types of applications is surprising. .NET applications received some of the lowest security scores.

Are developers too reactive?

Another key finding of the CAST report is the prevalence of performance concerns in developers’ minds:

It is not uncommon for end-users to complain vociferously to the development team about slow performance, prioritizing the remediation of performance problems over other quality problems such as poor maintainability.

This reactive approach from developers, while perfectly understandable, can lead to increasing technical debt over an application’s lifetime, as less attention is paid to software maintenance problems.

Perhaps the most telling recommendation from the CAST report is for developers to tackle structural flaws and maintenance problems in the development phase:

Time needs to be built in for remediation and refactoring prior to shipping. If you don’t do something about it now and continue to write code, you’re going to continue to build technical debt.

Consider your software legacy

So this CAST report encourages everyone involved in the software industry to consider the legacy of software applications. Don’t overlook the burdens of maintenance that an operational application must bear in order to be successful over its extended lifecycle.

Lastly, the CAST report cautions that software organizations are often unwilling to tackle cost of ownership or code complexity, particularly when an application appears to be running correctly:

In some cases organizations do not want to reduce the complexity of code that appears to be running correctly, even if cost of ownership and time to deliver enhancements could be reduced by refactoring the code. These observations may also identify the need for continued developer training in best design and coding practices.

Training really matters

So let’s not overlook the central take away from this last part of the CAST report — training in application design and best practices have a measurable impact on an application’s lifetime value and total cost of ownership.

I would argue that software executives reading this report should give serious consideration to setting up formal training programs on object oriented development, application security, and design patterns at a minimum.

Now that recommendation is really music to our ears at InnerWorkings!

Back in 1994, the Standish Group produced a provocative report which became famous overnight and has been quoted many times in the intervening years to lament the state of the software industry and the billions of dollars wasted on software projects.

Most software vendors with a solution to make things better (InnerWorkings included!) have quoted the Chaos report extensively in a bid for validation and gravitas. Updates to the original report have been eagerly consumed to assess whether new tools, development processes, or project management methodologies were having significant impact on the numbers. Sadly, they never were.

The key findings in the original Chaos report were as follows:

Scientific researchers, government advisers, software methodology groups, and software vendors all used the data to argue for their particular approach – all, it must be said, with the well-intentioned aim of making a dent in the Chaos report’s shocking numbers.

So I paid particular attention to a recent paper by two researchers at Vrije University in Amsterdam called The Rise and Fall of the Chaos Report Figures (please note, this link opens a PDF). The authors, J. Laurenz Eveleens and Chris Verhoef, used their own data — consisting of 5,457 forecasts of 1,211 real-world projects totaling hundreds of millions of Euros — and applied the Standish definitions to them. They then compared their results to the original Chaos report. The paper doesn’t make for an easy read, but the summary is very clear:

Our research shows that the Standish definitions of successful and challenged projects have four major problems: they’re misleading, one-sided, pervert the estimation practice, and result in meaningless figures.

That’s pretty strong stuff!

Misleading Definitions
The Standish Group identified three project categories as the basis for their report:

One of the problems with these definitions is that they don’t cover all scenarios. For example, a project that’s within budget and on-time, but that has less functionality in the final product, doesn’t fit any category. Secondly, the Standish definitions don’t consider a software project’s context, such as its usefulness, profit, or user satisfaction. Context is highly important, but also variable and complex in its measurable impact on the project outcome. So, the authors argue that the Standish definitions are misleading because they’re solely based on estimation accuracy of cost, time, and functionality.

Unrealistic Failure Rates
The next issue is whether the Standish definitions of estimation accuracy are sound. “They are not”, say the authors. This argument unfolds over a couple of pages — between Boehm’s cone of uncertainty, DeMarco’s Estimation Quality Factor and the median f/a ratio, I suggest you tackle this section over a glass of your favorite beverage. It worked for me. The bottom line is that even using accurate forecast data from real-world projects, the authors got only a 59% success rate when the Standish definitions were applied. In other words, the Standish definitions create a bias which exaggerates the negative and swells those shocking project numbers.

Perverting Accuracy
The Vrije University authors obtained data from a large multinational organization comprising 867 IT-intensive projects that began and were completed in 2005 or 2006. They found that the organization’s forecasts were generally higher than the actual project data. After further discussion, they discovered that the organization adopted the Standish definitions as the benchmark to establish when projects were successful. This caused project managers to overstate their project budget requests to increase the safety margin for success and hence skew the forecasts.

Meaningless Figures
Finally, the authors contend that “the Standish figures are meaningless”. Even if a company doesn’t use the key Standish performance indicators, forecasting biases always exist.

Without taking forecasting biases into account, it’s almost impossible to make any general statement about estimation accuracy across institutional boundaries.

Having worked with software R&D organizations for over 20 years, I would agree with that. There follows more f/a plots and median EQFs (and a second glass of wine on my part) to quantify the bias issue.

Meaningless! That’s a tough word, paradoxically itself full of meaning and implication and consequence.

So what’s a poor CEO to do with all of this? I haven’t quite made up my mind yet but I am looking forward to the Standish Group’s response. For the moment, I think I’ll just hide the Chaos slides in my InnerWorkings presentation deck. And that is such a pity because I really do love those ugly numbers!