Opening up the Black Box of Software Delivery

Guide highlights

• Size of the prize – Potential productivity gains

• Introduction to Software Engineering Intelligence (SEI)

• Measuring software delivery productivity – Right Things, Right Time, Right Way

• Improving software delivery productivity in practice (not theory)

• Building stakeholder trust – Productivity improvement reporting

Overview

At C-suite level, software delivery is often referred to as the last remaining ‘black box’ in an organization. It is the domain of the CTO – a large and strategically critical resource, which is little understood by other senior leaders. Money goes in, clever people work their magic and software is delivered (sometimes on time).

At a time when ‘productivity’ is a key theme in every Board room, stakeholders’ lack of understanding is compounded, as most Board-level reporting consists of ‘progress reports’ on key deliverables, which in no way answer the questions: ‘Are we delivering as efficiently as possible?’ And ‘are we maximizing our ROI on our software delivery initiatives’?