Typical Software Delivery Issues

In any software project, one of the key challenges is in putting systems and processes in place to effectively manage the software and the resources. Almost all software projects are plagued by some common issues.

Resource Management
At various points of the project life cycle resources would be over utilised or idle, this leads to loss of productivity as well as loss of billable hours. This occurs primarily due to varying workloads and a lack of information related to workloads and pending work. In addition ‘routine' tasks such as timesheet entry and task status maintenance are not done on time and are time consuming.

Requirements Management
Managing requirements is an issue even in small projects as there is a ‘Chinese Whisper' problem between requirement definition, program specification, build, test plans and testing. This is due to each output being manually derived from the previous without any cross check against the original requirement. As a result the final code may not always do what the client specified, leading to delivery defects, rework and higher costs.

Change and Defect Management
Change and Defect Management is never fully under control especially in the delivery and UAT stage with the focus being on completing the delivery first. As a result a number of changes and defects are never recorded, billable changes may not be billed, defects may reappear in future releases and the delivered product does not match up with the requirements.

Configuration Management
Configuration Management is an issue within and across releases; typical problems such as traceability of changes, overwriting of previous changes and reappearance of fixed defects are a result of errors in configuration management.

Options
The options open to software delivery organisations are as follows:

• Use packages for individual functions (Requirements, timesheets, configuration)
• Implement processes (CMM, ISO)
• Both the above

While these measures work to some extent they suffer from the following drawbacks:

• Are expensive to implement and maintain
• Are time consuming and depend upon manual data entry
• Create data discrepancies between various systems
• Do not provide adequate MIS support

Software Delivery Management System

Resource Management
The Resource Management function enables the user to define resources and allocate them to teams. The system them tracks the resource utilization based on the work assignments thereby enabling managers to track and optimally utilize their resources.
Task status and timesheet entries are generated automatically eliminating the need for manual entry of work done and time taken and enabling the reporting of metrics such as efficiency, on-time completion, defects and defect cycles by resource.

Requirements Management
The Requirements Manager enables users to define requirements against releases, assign work, maintain defects and changes, organise requirements into hierarchies by releases and across releases.
Requirements are automatically linked to assignments, resources and work products (documents and code). Users can therefore track progress and trace all documentation (including changes and defects) against individual requirements.

Change and Defect Management
Change and Defect Management enables the user to enter changes and defects (internal and client reported), track changes and defects against multiple releases, monitor status and report progress.
Changes and defects can be linked to a requirement thereby providing complete traceability and history by requirement.

Release Management
Release Management enables the user to configure releases, freeze check-ins prior to delivery, manage multiple deliveries against a release, review release status and monitor resource costs

Configuration Management
Configuration Management enables the user to load project configuration from database definitions and program files and documents from existing components or define new ones during development.
It controls project configuration, manages check-ins and check-outs and automatically updates timesheets and statuses based on work done by the developers.
Additionally the Configuration Manager creates and maintains an archive of changes made, thereby enabling the suer to compare versions (within and across releases) , review changes and trace source of defects.

Security Management
Application access is granted through either a windows login or through database login. The system manages security at two levels.
Functional access is restricted by user role and is configurable for an organisation. Roles can be defined by authorised users and functional access specified for them
Data access is restricted by teams, each team can be assigned one or more projects and members allocated to the teams will be able to access these projects only.

The following table summarises how SDMS addresses the issues in software delivery.