The Power of Combining Qualitative Assessment with Quantitative Analysis
The fact of the matter is, often times you are at loss as to how to improve your software. You know it needs improving because you can identify the symptoms -- perhaps poor business results, late delivery, inadequate quality or low productivity -- but their root cause is not so clear. What's more, the cause is often the subject of ruthless debate amongst your superiors, peers, and subordinates. Some believe it is the rigid architecture; others put the blame on poor technology choices; quite a few point out that the problem results from the software method used; and so on. Not one of these opinions is based on hard data.
Now, Cutter Consortium can provide you with the information that shifts the debate from gut-level opinion to analysis based on hard data. Cutter's Technical and Process Review examines your software product development in the context of:
- Cutter Consortium data
- Industry best practices
- Analysis of your technical debt
Your relentless focus on your own software development is like riding an elevator: you have no idea who rides the other elevators and where they are heading.
Cutter's Technical and Process Review enables you to step out of your "elevator" and view your software development in light of what's happening in the other elevators -- how you rank against industry benchmarks, your partners and your outsourcers.
Methodology
Cutter's Technical and Process Review is unique in combining qualitative analysis with quantitative analysis. For the qualitative assessment, Cutter experts inspect and analyze the software development process -- the way planning, development, delivery and software maintenance is done in your company. Then they inspect the output of the process (the code) to quantify data on both the quality of that code and the amount of technical debt you've accrued over the years, shedding light on the process through this quantitative analysis. The two assessments -- qualitative and quantitative -- are carried out independently to ensure one does not bias the other. Once the two have been completed, they are cross-validated and combined to provide a comprehensive report of both your software and your software development process.
Quantitative Analysis
Your Commitment
Your CTO, head of product management, head of quality assurance and key members of their staffs will spend time in face-to-face meetings with Cutter to review in-depth the documents they'll have sent to Cutter's team ahead of time. The documents Cutter's team will request from you cover about 20 different areas of software engineering.
And, you'll be asked to provide remote access to your code base (consistent with your security policy), so Cutter's technical team can conduct its technical debt analysis. The technical debt analysis can also be performed onsite if your security policy requires.
These two parallel commitments on your part enable Cutter's Technical and Process Review team to carry out incisive analysis which focuses on actionable insights.
Our Commitment
We promise to deliver a Discovery assessment that gives you a 360° perspective on the state of your software and your software development process. You'll get specific prioritized recommendation as to how to improve both in our comprehensive Technical and Process Review Report, typically covering:
- Engagement Methodology
- Context
- Software Method
- Code Quality and Technical Debt
- Product Process
- System Architecture
- Organization and Strategic Leadership
- Market Threats
- Should Your Enterprise Consider a Different Software Method?
- Risk Assessment in the Software Process Context
- Looking Forward
- Transformation with the Cutter Agile Implementation Framework
- Technical Debt Screen Shots
The overlaid data sets, comprising highlights from the interviews our team conducts, presentation of common themes that emerge from those conversations, and hard numbers from the code examination will give you a picture -- that you could not have otherwise drawn -- of how software is done in your organization. Once gut feeling, politics, and unsubstantiated opinion are eliminated from the examination of your software process and its output (the code) and replaced with unbiased industry data, you'll be able to focus on specific ineffectiveness and inefficiencies in the way your organization does software.
Case Study: Cutter’s Senior Consultant team revealed, via the quantitative component of their Technical and Process Review, that the number of in-process defects in our client’s key software component was 9 times the industry average for releases of comparable size. We subsequently worked with the client to improve estimation and resource allocation so that a less aggressive form of swarming would be used in the future. As part of our joint work with the client, we are currently merging design, development and test strands in order to attain faster/earlier delivery of quality products.
Cutter's Technical and Process Review delivers an overall assessment of your Agile software maturity: you'll know just where your "elevator" is in relation to others'. Armed with this data, you'll be poised to improve software quality, process effectiveness, and ultimately improve business results. To learn more about how you can benefit, contact us at +1 781 648 8700 or sales@cutter.com.