Management decisions made before a software project is underway are a significant factor in determining whether it succeeds or fails. In a recent article for Projects at Work, QSM's Don Beckett identifies seven principles, based on comprehensive studies, that leaders must support and uphold to help create an environment in which projects can succeed. Ignoring them practically guarantees failure.

Don Beckett has 18 years of experience in software project estimation, measurement, and analysis. His responsibilities at QSM include research, consulting, and customer support. Don was an analyst/co-author of the 2006 QSM Software Almanac and has contributed articles to Crosstalk and Software Tech News.

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The problems of software projects are concentrated in three areas: schedule, cost, and quality.  These problems have accompanied software development from the beginning, so they are not new.  Nor have they been ignored.  Huge amounts of thought and effort have been focused on them with unfortunately modest results.  Improvement efforts have been concentrated on management technique (think PMO), process improvement (CMMI, for example), and better tools.  These are all good things, and I can’t imagine embarking on a development activity of any magnitude without them.  However, they have not significantly reduced the incidence of schedule, budget, and quality problems.  Since the problems remain, obviously these remedies have not effectively addressed the root causes of schedule and cost overruns and poor quality.

After enduring the longest winter I can remember, I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of spring, and what better way to do that than to participate in QSM’s annual March Madness Tournament?  For those of you not familiar with our March Madness pool, it’s kind of a big deal.  The top finisher receives a portion of the winnings as well as bragging rights for the following year, and in the process gains immunity from being subject to ridicule by our Commish.  This year the steaks are especially high, as Warren Buffet has offered $1 billion to the person who can guess the perfect bracket.

I will admit that while my standings in last year’s tournament were not as high as I had hoped, I am determined to turn that around this year.  I’ve abandoned my mascot battle strategy and instead will be implementing some techniques used by some of the best software estimators in the field.  I will be using history to determine my picks.  

Instead of spending a lot of time laboriously filling in each line, I had Yahoo Sports auto-fill my bracket based on the teams’ historical standings this season.  To come up with my final score, I averaged the scores of the previous 10 national championship games.  It pains me to predict that some of my favorite teams will be eliminated in the second and third rounds in this bracket, but in the interest of becoming a self-made billionaire I cannot afford to make any emotionally-driven decisions that ignore the stats. 

I think it’s safe to say that nobody really enjoys hearing bad news.  It’s especially hard if you’re the person who has to deliver the bad news, particularly to a superior.  How will your boss react?  Will you be the one held responsible (unfairly) for the project failure?  These are all reasons for keeping the ‘bad news’ to yourself and letting those in charge find out on their own.  

I’ll share a story about one of the first jobs I ever held, as an assistant manager at a summer swimming pool.  My supervisor had a very hands-off approach to management and would often rely on me and the other assistant managers to handle the day-to-day operations of the pool.  Whenever I would deliver less-than-favorable news to him, such as our pool vacuum breaking, or a health inspector dropping by to schedule a visit, my supervisor would literally stick his fingers in his ears and say “La la la la la, I can’t hear you.  Taylor, you know how I feel about bad news.  Fix the problem.”  This put me in a very awkward situation, because as a high school student, I didn’t necessarily have the training or the authority to fix every problem myself, in order to shield him from the ‘bad news.’  

Unfortunately, this type of management exists beyond the pool house and can frequently be found in the corporate world as well.  In an environment where your reputation can mean everything, stakeholders can be very reluctant to receive bad news about the status of their project.  The silver lining in this is that receiving ‘bad news’ isn’t necessarily always a bad thing.  Allow me to explain.

Can advances in data-driven estimation turn software project failure into a distant memory? Well, if learning from experience is the key to success, imagine what you could do with real-time access to three decades of research, thousands of projects and more than 600 industry trends. In this article, originally published on Projects at Work, QSM's Larry Putnam, Jr. identifies key benefits of employing estimation best practices for project success.

As Co-CEO for QSM, Larry Putnam, Jr.'s has more than 25 years of experience in software measurement, estimating and project control. He joined QSM in 1987 and has worked in every aspect of the business, including business development, customer support, professional services and now executive management.

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