3 Tips for Speeding up Systems Delivery
The development of complex software involves significant challenges.
To prosper companies must balance engineering and technical excellence with increasingly
challenging business objectives. What does that mean in real terms?
1.
Managing costs
2.
Managing development time
3.
Meeting requirements
4.
Controlling quality
5.
Managing change
6.
Complying with any applicable regulations
Traditional systems development must adapt to effectively
meet these goals because it focuses too strongly on its various functions in
isolation, as opposed to a holistic view of the system. The experience of
riding a bicycle cannot be understood by looking at the how the gear system
works or the function of the brakes as separate parts.
Requirements Management
Gathering of requirements should take place from the
'horse's mouth' whenever possible, that often involves busy high-profile users,
but if you want them to be happy first-time around, then get a little of their
time and use it well. Analysts need to understand what the users want and share
that in its entirety with the development team. Going to the functional
specification level immediately often results in information being lost and the
developers don't start with the best chance of making the right decisions along
the way (this happens to be one of the biggest challenges when outsourcing
offshore). Once the requirements have been gathered these need to be
effectively shared, so everyone between the end-user and the quality assurance
team have access to them. Simple concept with powerful results! Engineers can
refer to them for the little decisions that need to be made throughout the
life-cycle and QA can go 'beyond' testing from a specification perspective.
Delivery Management
Agile methodology has gone a long way to improve the
likelihood of synchronising deliverables with expectation, however we have
found that the using a hybrid of Agile and Waterfall concepts produce the best
results. Every environment is difference, so find the right recipe for that
'perfect bake' as Mary Berry would say! With cloud-based systems rollout has
become simpler, but only if it's considered from the very beginning.
Architectural decisions should be influenced by constraints and nuances of the
infrastructure, as opposed to being seen as a last stop.
Communications Management
Regular and open communication builds trust, performance and
is essential in empowering team members to meet and exceed expectations.
Accountability is essential! In larger organisations this is more challenging,
but the more team members don't shy away from sometimes difficult
conversations, and the more the key information is available to all project
team members, the better the performance will get. Technical jargon is often
used to conceal misunderstanding or worse, poor performance, so it is well
worth the time to decrypt these so that they can be truly shared.
George Toursoulopoulos is a financial technology specialist and Director at Synetec, one of the UK’s leading providers of bespoke financial services software solutions.
