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A software development capability assessment is an important first step in improving the business value an organisation can realise from its information technology investment.

A software development capability assessment from Improvix will give you a snapshot of how your software development is being performed, and give you valuable insight only achievable by an independent third party able to cut across reporting lines.

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A software development capability assessment is an important first step in improving the business value an organisation can realise from its information technology investment.

There are many possible drivers:-

• New technology
• Outsourcing
• Mergers and Acquisitions
• Business/Customer needs
• Regulation and/or Compliance

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A software development capability assessment can be applied at many levels within an organisation. Terminology and organisation can vary tremendously, so the structure below is generic and intended to reflect a typical hierarchical grouping.
The higher level assessments will include the lower levels as appropriate to gain the detailed understanding of how lower levels implement the higher level goals.

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The lowest level of organisation is where individual development projects are carried out. A project has a budget and a timescale for delivering a software or system release. Projects can be part of a product-line or a program.
At the project level, an assessment can be made of how the policies and practices of the project team are contributing to the likely outcome of the project. Recommendations can be made to improve the chance of successful delivery of the project. The small scope and timeframe for implementation (i.e. recommendations need to be applied in time to have an effect on the project) reduces the chance of recommendations being applied to other projects.

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This level reflects the grouping of IT capability to address a particular market sector, or an on-going program to achieve particular business goals.
At this level, an assessment of capabilities can be made over a larger scope and with a longer timeframe, which gives the opportunity to consider cross-project issues.
An assessment is made of architecture, integration and business modelling and how the policies and practices of the product-line or program affect re-work, re-use, project dependencies, team mobility, and resource planning.

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The highest level in the organisation defines policies, guidelines and strategies that affect all parts of the organisation.
At this level, the assessment aims to understand the business strategies and business drivers and how these influence IT strategy.
The assessment aims to understand the organisations business processes and the costs of the software development activities that support them.

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The assessment framework addresses four areas of an organisations software development capability:

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The engineering assessment covers the skills and practices of delivering software, including the appropriate use of supporting tools. The assessment is based on understanding to what extent the organisation practices the six best practices of software engineering as identified by Rational, and understanding the skills in each of the nine disciplines of the Rational Unified Process:-

• Develop iteratively
• Manage Requirements
• Use Component Architectures
• Model Visually
• Coninuously verify quality
• Manage Change

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The Organisation assessment looks at how program and project management practices support the engineering effort. Insight is gained into the organisation, planning, resourcing and measurement of software development:-

• Team organisation based on components, not disciplines or functional units
• Software lifecycle based on addressing risk up front through iterative development
• Earned value is based on outputs (delivered, tested software) not inputs
• Programs and projects have clear management structure, not matrix management
• Organisation-wide metrics defined for program and project status, stability and quality
• Projects maintain system architecture teams throughout the lifecycle

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Organisations rely more and more on information technology, so it is important to understand to what extent system development is regarded as an integral part of the business.
Organisations software systems should support and implement their business processes. An organisations ability to deliver quality software on time and within budget should be seen as business critical.
These factors affect how an organisation can derive business value from IT, and to assess this we consider:-

• To what extent the overall business management reflects engineering and management practices
• How well IT infrastructure supports optimisation of business processes, for example through the use of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

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• How well the supplier is integrated into the project lifecycle
• How effectively supplier contracts are managed
• How effectively suppliers reflect the organisations program/project management processes
• How effectively suppliers follow the organisations development process
• The use of a shared engineering collaboration infrastructure
• The use of an integrated management infrastructure

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The Assessment consists of the following four activities:

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The assessment takes the form of interviews with a selection of an organisations staff covering a range of IT roles, management, stakeholders and sponsors.
The interviews contain a set of common questions and a set of questions that are specific to each role. The questions address the topics outlined above under the Assessment Framework, as appropriate to each role.

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The answers to the questions are collated and analysed to identify:-

• Common symptoms or pain points
• The root causes of these symptoms

The root causes represent the behaviours of the organisation that deliver the current software development capability.
Each of the Assessment Framework areas is scored to give the organisations capability.

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The scores can be benchmarked against average software development capability. This can be done using a simplified software economics model based on COCOMO II. This will show how the organisation compares against industry average software development capability.

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The software economic model is then used to identify the areas of improvement that give the greatest gain. This can be an interactive process, using the organisations priorities, showing the possible time and budget trade-offs of various improvement areas.

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A report is provided with the following contents:-

• Summarised, anonymous answers from interviews
• Analysis results for symptoms and root causes
• Graphical presentation of answer distributions to identify common themes
• Benchmarking results against COCOMO II industry averages
• Prioritisation of areas of improvement
• Recommendations for implementation

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