Minority of software projects delivered problem-free

Visit | Media Coverage | Planit Testing Index | November 19, 2010

By Brad Howarth
November 19 2010
Source: iTWire

While major software development project problems are often the stuff of headlines, it seems they are more the rule than the exception – and we are getting worse at them.

According to Planit Sofware Testing’s annual Software Testing Index, only 42 percent of software projects started in the past two years were delivered on time, on budget, and in line with their original scope. This result was a decline from 2009 when 49 percent of projects were reported as being delivered optimally. The Index found that projects were more likely to run over time, cost more than was estimated, or experience changes to more than 25 percent of their original scope.

Planit managing director Chris Carter said the major causes of these problems were poor definition and gathering of project requirements.

“We seem to have this inability to firstly to define what the requirements are adequately, and when we have defined them, to actually stick with them,” Carter said. “And we are not very good at project estimation from a budget and a time perspective. And we don’t set realistic expectations – we are almost setting ourselves up to fail.”

Not surprisingly then 64 percent of respondents said that improving requirements gathering would make a significant positive impact on project outcomes.

When a project came under pressure respondents nominated that they were more likely to extend the deadline or even increase the budget rather than reduce their focus on quality processes such as testing. Only 1 percent of projects were reported as failing entirely.

Now in its fourth year, the Planit Software Testing Index gathered responses from 235 individuals with roles related to software testing in organisations across Australian and New Zealand, with strong representation from the Software/IT, Financial Services, Government and Telecommunications sectors. Other findings included a significant rise in the number of organisations that use Agile software development methodologies, which overtook the more traditional Waterfall model of sequential software development process. Almost half of all organisations now use Agile, although often in parallel with more traditional methodologies.

The Index also found that despite the role that testing can play in improving software project outcomes, attitudes towards software testing declined in many organisations. The number of respondents that rated it as a critical element in producing reliable software fell from 56 percent in 2009 to 45 percent now.

“A further 22 percent of our respondents consider software testing to be strategically important to a project’s success,” Carter says. “But we now have 19 percent of our respondents who are saying that testing is a necessary evil, and we also have a large number of respondents who are thinking that testing is either a cost to be minimised or not a major priority in their organisation.”

Carter said he was pleased however to see that two thirds of respondents were business-focused when it came to making their business case for software testing, with 40 percent nominating that it leads to enhanced customer satisfaction and builds customer loyalty.

On average, testing accounted for 19 percent of project budgets, behind only the actual development phase in terms of budget allocation.

“With 19 percent of the budget you should be able to deliver a quality product,” Carter said. “The justifications for a reasonable budget for software testing to deliver quality are well presented and appear to be reasonable well received by executive management.”

He also said respondents’ description of project conditions was generally positive, making the negative project outcomes even more puzzling.

“One would have expected with the project conditions being reported that the project outcomes would have been fairly positive, but we’ve found that in 2010 the project outcomes have been worse than 2009,” he said.

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Opportunity clicks for workers with tech skills

Visit | Media Coverage | November 9, 2010

By Jennifer Foreshew
November 9 2010
Source: The Australian

WHEN senior consultant Peter Youssef moved from the Gold Coast to Sydney, it took just a couple of weeks to snare the position he wanted.

The 26-year-old started with LoyaltyTech, a small software development company, in September after leaving his role as a senior software engineer in the telecommunications sector.

A survey released today by recruitment firm Robert Half Technology shows almost half of Australian technology employees feel their salary package is not fair and in line with the market.

However, after sending a couple of resumes to recruitment agencies, Mr Youssef was surprised by the response. “There were so many that were contacting me it was difficult to keep track of them and where they were applying me to,” he said. “There were quite a few opportunities.”

Mr Youssef opted to work for LoyaltyTech to get experience in a more customer-facing role. He received an increase of about 10 per cent on his former salary, plus bonuses.

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Every second week, he returns to the Gold Coast and works from there for a few days. “That is a perk you wouldn’t really find in very big companies,” he said.

In the survey, almost three-quarters said they would switch jobs to improve their bargaining power in salary negotiations.

“These guys have felt under-paid and undervalued over the last 18 months,” Robert Half Technology manager Jon Chapman said.

Salary rises in the sector ranged from 5 per cent to 40 per cent for in-demand skills. The technologies in greatest demand were in application development, business intelligence, data warehousing and enterprise resource planning, he said.

The survey showed 70 per cent of employers of technology workers were concerned about losing top performers in the next year, and 81 per cent planned to hire in the next six months.

Chris Carter, managing director of software testing systems provider Planit, said his biggest difficulty was finding talent, particularly at the senior end.

For software testing, wage demands were 15-20 per cent “more than we were paying a couple of years ago”, he said. “It is a challenge, but it is not stopping us growing. It is stopping us growing at a rate that we would be comfortable with.”

Planit, which has offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Wellington, has more than 300 staff, 95 per cent of them permanent. It has outsourcing arrangements with an Indian company.

In 2008, Planit snared 14 staff in a recruiting drive in Britain. “In 2011, if things continue the way they are, we will mostly certainly go over to the UK again to look for another 12 to 20 people,” said Mr Carter.
Test manager Daniel Stainton joined Planit’s Sydney office in June after being retrenched from his former role with a big telecommunications company.

The 41-year-old father of three secured a salary increase of 10 per cent when he joined Planit.
“Planit have offered me exactly what I need,” said Mr Stainton, who has worked in the industry for 22 years. “I know that I will be well looked after and there are opportunities if I want to teach or train. I am hoping to grow with the company.”

LoyaltyTech managing director Matt Hampshire is expecting salaries to jump by 10-20 per cent when he recruits staff early next year. “What we are finding is our staff are putting pressure on us to keep their salaries up, and recognise them the best we can in different ways.”

LoyaltyTech, which does cross-channel integration for the retail sector, typically looks for senior Java programmers who can deal with frontline customers.

The Sydney firm, which has offices in Melbourne and the US, has just completed a hiring cycle but plans to more than double its full-time staff next year.

The Advantage Job Index, released yesterday,indicates employees will expect higher wages as interest rates and the cost of living rise. Advantage Resourcing global market intelligence director Robert Olivier said employers would have to offer greater incentives to attract and retain staff.

“As people see major parts of their outgoings increase” they would be pushing for more, he said. “They kind of feel they are due it because they have tolerated the tough times and now there is plenty of choice out there.”

The Advantage Job Index recorded a 2.02 per cent national increase in October, but the tech sector dipped by 1.54 per cent.

Peoplebank chief executive Peter Acheson said IT&T recruitment activity had remained steady throughout October and the first week of November.

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Organisations getting Agile to shorten development

Visit | Media Coverage | October 4, 2010

By Brad Howarth
October 04 2010
Source: iTWire

The current desire of many organisations to accelerate software development projects has led to an unprecedented level of interest in the Agile software development methodology. But while Agile has dramatically shortened the rollout cycles for new projects, project managers have been warned that it in no way reduces the need for independent software testing.

iTWire is conducting a survey on the experiences and views of managers responsible for software quality assuring and testing in organisations across Australia and New Zealand. As a participant you will receive a free copy of the report summary, giving you insights into how organisations across multiple sectors approach testing.)Managing director of the software testing company Planit Chris Carter said the role of testers remained as vital within Agile as other methodologies. Mr Carter said the training and mindset of testers was quite different from that of developers, as while in the main the developers tested to see that the product did what was supposed to do, an independent tester looked to see that it didn’t do what it wasn’t supposed to do.

“Testing knowledge and expertise can be used to help support the developers to deliver higher-quality code through appropriate selection of tests,” Carter said. “The tester can also help to encourage the ‘building-in’ of quality during the coding and guiding the developer to code testable products.”

Agile development differs from more conventional methodologies, such as Waterfall or the V-Model, in that it promotes iterative development and incremental releases, rather than sequential development where the main benefits are not realised until the end of the project. Agile operates on the premise that change will be a constant part of the project, which is normally resisted in a Waterfall approach.

He said Planit had numerous customers that were using Agile methodologies, and had seen testers also start to take on a role of being a link between the technical jargon of the developer and the business-speak of the business analyst or project owner.

Carter said testers worked much closer with the developers in an Agile project, and there was shared team responsibility for quality, reducing the potential for the emergence of a culture of blame. As a result, he said testers required greater understanding of the field within which they were working, and may need greater technical skills and capabilities as they would be seeing the code earlier.

“Continuous integration also presents challenges, not least the amount of regression testing that may be required,” Carter said. “The faster delivery to market within Agile also means that testing needs to be smarter, and the use of testing techniques for test case design is critical.”

Carter said that Agile projects also demanded a greater use of exploratory testing techniques, where the tester learns as they test and uses the results from one test to direct the next one.

He described Agile development as being not only about the change in delivery model of software development but also a change in culture, as management no longer assigned roles or tasks. Instead, the team made collective decisions and organised and adapted itself based on what it was trying to achieve.

“All this points to the fact that testers need to be able to adapt to change, have greater interactions with their team members and be able to work within a more fluid environment,” Carter said. “Agile promotes a creative, self-organising team to which the Project Manager takes on more of a guidance role instead of confirming to a fixed task driven plan.

“Role boundaries are gone with Agile and we all need to be adaptive and turn our hand to whatever needs to be done to deliver the product.”

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