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

4.27. Six Principles of ADP

4.27.1. Principle 1: Establishment of Infrastructure

By infrastructure I mean a well-defined system of hardware and software tools, processes, and roles for team members to play.

NOTE

Build a strong foundation through integration of people and technology.

People's roles in a software team need to be defined to include active participation in and control of defect prevention. Technology must be used both to automate best practices and to track and measure project status data.

The details of the infrastructure—how people and technology are actually organized—are beyond the scope of this book. The key thing for you to insist on, as CEO, is that such an infrastructure exists.

4.27.1.1. People—Extending Traditional Roles

Building an infrastructure involves organizing employees in a way that will promote communication, productivity, efficiency, and overall job satisfaction. Traditional roles must be extended beyond their conventional definitions to include defect prevention activities.

4.27.1.2. Technology—Minimum and More

As a minimum, a development group must have a functioning source control system, an automated build system, a problem-tracking system, and an automated reporting system. As CEO, you do not need to know exactly what each of these items is, but your CIO must.

These elements must now be integrated so they form a kind of enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for software development. Then a workflow system must be added to distribute ...