Don't blame the developers!

External stakeholders and the tangled web of complex software

development.Patrick WagstromIBM TJ Watson Research Center

Hey! You Got People in My

Software!Patrick Wagstrom

IBM TJ Watson Research Center

62% of IT projects fail to meet their

schedule

Source: Dynamic Markets survey, 2008

CityTime in NYC has exploded from $68m to

$700m

Source: Wall Street Journal, 2011/06/21

> $1 trillion annual IT

investment

Source: IEEE, September 2005

5-15% of projects abandoned after money is spent

UML is not the problem

Formal verification is not

the problem

Coding is not the problem

Debugging is not the problem

Deployment is not the problem

All of these are good

But they focus on the software

Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iliotibial_tract

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/meddygarnet/3392686660/

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/familymwr/5112318513/

Photo: lululemon athletica http://www.flickr.com/photos/lululemonathletica/5197327623/

What else remains?

People are the primary

determinant of success on IT

projects

Who is involved in enterprise software

development?

Just a few Stakeholders…

• Customer• Developers• Architects• Testers• Brand Executives• Legal• Marketing

• Product Managers• Sales• Services• Strategy• Support• Partner Companies

From Williams et. al. 2010. “Supporting Enterprise Stakeholders in Software Projects”

Photo: US Fish & Wildlife Service http://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwspacific/5565696408/

Ecosystems

Varied forms of Ecosystems

Varied forms of Ecosystems

Bringing Developers Into an Ecosystem

Mail Bugs Code

Release 1 Release 2 Release 3

Mail Bugs Code

Bugs Mail Code

Code

Bugs Code

Socio Technical

Accelerated

Tech Social

Technical

Source Only

Finding of Progression Paths - Project

Social-techAcceleratedTech-socialTechnicalSource Only

Finding of Progression Paths - Ecosystem

Social-techAcceleratedTech-socialTechnicalSource Only

Photo: David Watkins http://www.flickr.com/photos/dvids/4987579486/

Enterprise

Teams

Organization

Profit, Internal Rate of Return

Project deliverables, cost and schedule

Delivery of business value through the optimal use of

resources

Staff member/ Developer

Work item, artifact completion

commits to

commits to

commits to

commits to Development tools: IDEs, debuggers, performance tools

Team tools: version control, bug and work item tracking tools, project management tools

Financial modeling: Business intelligence

Busi

ness

Thi

nkin

gTe

chni

cal T

hink

ing

Portfolio and risk management: Measure, plan, and optimize a portfolio of development projects

Coordination and Commitments

Financier: Uncertainty and Risk

• Communication around discrete variables is difficult

• Directly model risk using a triangular distribution

• Use monte carlo simulations to determine the range of outcomes

Expected HighLow0

Ships as Investment Analyst with IBM Rational Focal Point 6.5

Seminal: Actionable Insight for Software Support

• Support is a major component of enterprise software

• Dashboards provide information, but are difficult to use

• We seek to create a system that provides– Dashboard like analytics– High interactivity for exploration– Insight into what is next– Make it usable and comprehensible

Why 80th Percentile?

• We’re concerned about operationally relevant metrics

• Processes optimized for efficiency in the head– Tail are often strange issues that don’t reflect on

organization• 80% percentile differentiates head from tail

patrick@wagstrom.nethttp://wagstrom.net/@pridkett