Josh Folgado

Companies are caught on the horns of a dilemma. One horn of the dilemma is that developers are working too hard to have time to learn about effective practices that can solve most development-time problems; the other horn is that they wont get the time until they document what they have and they learn more about effective rapid development practices.

Other problems are market changes almost daily and organizations can’t wait. Its hard to justify taking time to learn more about quality when everyone is under intense schedule pressure to “just ship it”.

The development-time problem is pervasive. Several surveys have found that about two-thirds of all projects substantially overrun their estimates (Lederer and Prasad 1992, Gibbs 1994, Standish Group 1994). The average project misses its planned delivery date by 25 to 50 percent and the size of the average schedule slip increases with the size of the project (Jones 1994). Year after year, development-faced issues have appeared at the tops of lists of the most critical issues facing the software-development community.

Although the slow-development problem is pervasive, some companies are developing rapidly. Researchers found that 10-to-1 differences in productivity between companies within the same industries, and some researchers have found even greater variations.

The purpose of these pages is provide you with the information needed to move towards the “10” side of the ratio. It should help deliver more functionality to users in less time. No matter what the state of the projects are, you will find practices that will enable you to improve its condition.

Who should read these pages?

Slow development affects everyone involved with software development, including developers, analysts, traders, etc. Each of these groups has a stake in solving the slow-development problem.

This site in intended to help developers and managers know what’s possible to help managers and users know what is realistic and to serve as an avenue of communication between developers and managers and users so that tailor-made solutions are created using the best possible approach to meet their schedule, cost, quality and other goals.