|  |  Time for an IT Waste Directive?
The issue of Waste, in all its forms, is on the public agenda more than ever before. Software Waste, in particular, now needs greater focus from businesses of all sizes. A Borland White Paper presents the issue
The issue of Waste is becoming more and more pressing in many areas. For example, four million mobile phones were sold in the UK alone at Christmas 2004, replacing older models and meaning another four million older unfashionable phones were probably no longer used, or simply wasted.
Waste occurs when we discard something, without thinking about how it can then be put to further use. At this point, we are failing to see it as a resource - it's precisely for this reason that waste is on our agenda more than ever before, as we increasingly focus on the re-use and conservation of scarce resources.
Legislation is coming designed to guard on how waste should be managed in a range of different fields, such as the European Union's Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE), which makes producers of consumer electronics responsible for the recycling of electrical goods.
In business, keeping waste to a minimum is guided by similar principles, namely avoiding wasteful practice, e.g. time, efforts and resources on unnecessary work. Wasteful practices have a monetary value, and ultimately a direct effect on the bottom-line. The ability to manage these practices - practices such as eliminating the replication of work which could have been done right first time, making best use of shared knowledge to save upon extra individual wasted efforts later, or avoiding wasteful business purchases, such as buying that new office PC when last year's model continues to do the job perfectly - will feed into business success.
Yet unlike these wasteful examples around time, personnel, office supplies and hardware purchases, software development practices within business today have discreetly escaped the glare of wasteful scrutiny - now it deserves a closer inspection.
Software waste moves centre stage
Wasted software development time is a problem for businesses and staff alike, creating cost over-runs and missed deadlines that, eventually, cause lost business opportunity or even jobs.
Yet, waste can be controlled and reduced through improved process, communication and collaboration within companies. Whilst there is not, and perhaps never can be, legislation in place to guard against waste in software development, that shouldn't stop standards being promoted that elevate the issue of software and IT waste to the same level as the awareness of waste management standards currently legislated for by the EU.
Borland warns that businesses are still not doing enough to reduce the IT waste mountain caused by badly managed software development and calls for businesses Europe-wide to implement their own Waste Directives. Figures released estimate that in the U.S. alone, $60 billion is wasted on software errors.
A huge amount of investment is lost in failed IT projects and software development each year, budget that could be invested in other parts of the business. If IT Waste is avoided, budget can be redirected and turned into real revenue for the organisation. And, even more importantly, it can both raise the credibility of IT within business today and enrich and save jobs.
The software development teams of the average organisation spend significant amounts of their time and efforts - up to 40% - on rework of existing systems and projects. Sometimes this is done because the business needs change based on customers' demand and market dynamics - and the business needs to adapt accordingly. But more often, it's because of a real lack of understanding of requirements or miscommunication between business and IT, a problem exacerbated by recent trends towards offshoring development teams in multiple locations around the globe.
Software development teams also often work in isolation from the rest of the business without properly managed business processes or agreed upon ROI measurements in place. Poor project management, a lack of visibility across software investments and little control over the process can make matters even worse.
Software Delivery Optimization (SDO), Borland's vision for transforming software development and delivery into a more manageable and predictable business process, provides an option for aligning the business with IT.
The combination of process optimization, skills training and technology support that SDO promotes can also help IT manage new and changing requirements that the business continuously places on IT, making the process more efficient and ultimately reducing the rework factor. This can free up some of the time which can then be applied to new business projects.
The IT budget spent on new business projects also needs to be spent effectively and the IT project lifecycle on new business projects optimised sufficiently to avoid IT Waste. This in turn could lead to a doubling of the amount of IT spend available for new projects, without the CIO having to increase their budget or resources.
Borland says that techniques for CIOs to avoid IT waste exist and there is no doubt that it's becoming easier to avoid wasteful software development projects. Indeed all those involved from developers, analysts, testers, architects -to CIOs and ultimately to the CEO and the CFO, are waking up to this and are increasingly keen to do so.
Time for an IT Waste Directive
There is however always room for improvement. This is why Borland is calling for the issue of IT Waste to be placed firmly on the board agenda.
The UK government has recognised this problem. It recently announced plans to cut the cost of public sector IT projects by increasing standardisation, matching supply to demand and reducing reliance on outside consultants and advisors. However, IT Waste is by no means restricted to the public sector. Industry data is available for the US commercial sector albeit not the UK. The 2004 CHAOS report by respected research house the Standish Group, cited numbers from the National Institute of Standards which found total project waste in the US running at $55 billion, comprising $38 billion in lost dollar value and $17 billion in cost overruns.
According to the CHAOS report, 90 per cent of projects are delivered late and over half exceed budget. Perhaps most worryingly, 66 per cent of software projects are not considered to be successful, a shocking statistic. These figures represent a huge amount of budget wasted and it is perhaps no surprise, given the frequency of IT project failures, that IT departments are often blamed for squandering resources and viewed with scepticism by the rest of the business.
With many CIOs reporting directly to the CFO, IT budgets remain under intense scrutiny, with the CFO needing strong awareness of IT projects in case something goes wrong, as ultimately, he/she will be held responsible. The CIO's responsibility is to improve communication between IT and business and in doing so, increase the likelihood of projects delivered successfully.
It is also imperative that CIOs and IT Directors implement a disciplined process for delivering quality software with maximum business value i.e. on time, on budget and of high quality, and integrate the IT department as a key stakeholder in the business.
In many organisations, the software development team, unlike most other departments, has no managed process or ROI measurement in place to guide and optimise operations. This lack of alignment with the rest of the business leads to miscommunication, process errors and application defects resulting in one thing - waste.
8 reasons for IT Waste: 1. Lack of clarity - about roles, responsibilities and requirements
2. Lack of defining and managing project requirements and failure to communicate these from project sponsors to developers
3. Inability to define/articulate problems
4. Poor design/implementation
5. Using unsuitable technologies (often because a project lead likes some language/technology they use because it's familiar but not always best)
6. Poor testing, inadequate testing or testing too late
7. Inability of the IT organisation to measure the results and manage the process
8. Inability to control and respond quickly to changes.
Ultimately, in order to avoid IT Waste, people, processes and technology need to be aligned.
Fertile ground for IT Waste is re-work. This is where an application has to be rebuilt after failing to live-up to standards and the earlier a problem in the development process is detected, the easier and more cost-effective it is to fix. For example, if a defect is found at requirement stage, fixing will only incur a small cost, yet when detected at a later stage, the cost rises exponentially. There are statistics that state it costs 80% more to fix at the testing phase than at the requirement phase.
Businesses which conduct IT projects are facing pressures from all sides, costs need to be kept low, whilst quality has to be high, delivery must be fast and on time and, at the same time, issues such as skills shortages and balancing the development with maintenance effort affects the overall development process.
Five steps to avoid IT Waste:
1. Requirements definition & management
The right planning includes requirements definition and management . According to analysts and industry statistics, poor requirements are the single biggest contributor to software failure. If orgnisations get requirements right the first time, every time - this ultimately results in less rework, lower costs and better software.
2. Risk analysis & quality control
It is important to weigh up risks and opportunities of a project before embarking on it to enable robust contingency planning, resource allocation and time scale planning. Risk should be kept under review through regular quality control from inception, Quality needs to be built into software at the very point of project definition, tested earlier and more often, and traced throughout every phase of the software delivery lifecycle, keeping quality control in check and at the same time guarding against risk.
3. Properly trained and collaborative teams
Teams need to have the right skills and expertise in order to fulfil the specific requirements of the project. They need to collaborate internally and externally with other teams and stakeholders in order to achieve the projects aims - the IT department needs to be aligned with the overall business. Moreover, teams need to have clearly defined roles, responsibilities and clearly defined goals. Teams should be able to communicate and collaborate through centralised control of all project assets, aligning the business with IT.
4. Project management and change control
A project's progress needs to be constantly monitored by referring and cross-referencing actual work with the original plan and timeline. Corrective action can be taken as soon as significant deviation from the original plan, timeline and budget is detected.
5. Organizational alignment and impact focused measurement
All IT development must be aligned with organizational needs, and should address goals supported by leaders at all levels of the organization. Likewise success and progress measures of each IT project need to be similarly aligned with business goals, with these measures set-up to validate both short and long term impacts of each individual project. |
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