The Next Leap in Productivity: What Top Managers Really Need to Know about Information Technology

4.8. Crucial Methodology

In order to get more work out of your IT team, you will have to incorporate them into a programming system that works like a well-oiled machine. You must create an infrastructure that includes regular procedures and lots of automation.

When you have this infrastructure set up correctly, developers are not wasting time in meetings, reviewing status, or working out schedules; they are not thrashing over interfaces being redesigned for the nth time; and they are not struggling to incorporate new features that were not in the original requirements.

Most importantly, when you do things the right way, developers do not have to stop what they are doing and go back to fix bugs found by quality assurance (QA) after the code has been "completed." Instead, they are doing what you are paying them to do, which is to create innovative solutions to complex business problems.

When the environment is set up correctly, it becomes almost impossible to create poor code. When software is done right, QA does not find defects for developers to fix. Rather, the defects never happen in the first place. The result: both productivity and quality go up.

The way to achieve this is through a methodology that I call Automated Defect Prevention (ADP). In a nutshell, ADP is a practical approach to software management through process improvement. (For a more in-depth, technical discussion of this methodology, please refer to Automated Defect Prevention by Dorota Huizinga and Adam Kolawa.) ...