Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
is not 50 percent — but the number should be taken no more seriously
than that. Furthermore, the effects of a change in scope may already be
reflected in changes to money and time — making all three Red can be
confusing.
If one's project is being monitored using only these vectors, one must
treat them as a minimal set that is necessary but not sufficient. Use them
for reporting to external agencies as required, but do not depend on them
alone for active project management. Do supplement them with more
meaningful vectors and metrics.
Granularity
Ashby's law of requisite variety (Chapter 2, Systems) governs status set-
tings. If one is tracking five things, then one needs five indicators. If one
has four vendors, each of them may be on time or running late on delivery.
If different approvals are required, some may have been obtained, while
others are in the pipeline. Trying to club all this lower-level information
and assign status at a higher level can be done through some kind of a
weighting algorithm, but this must be explicitly recognized.
Summary
Software development is basically a process of communication between
customers, developers, and machines. Good communication is essential
for successful software development where miscommunication can lead
to rework and delays. Communication models from communications the-
ory aim to ensure that a message is transmitted correctly and efficiently.
Some of the ideas regarding noisy environments can be applied to software
development, where, to take one example, there is often inconsistency
and incompleteness in requirements. When it comes to software require-
ments, the Rashomon effect, wherein the requirements are being inter-
preted differently by each, can cause problems. As for the distribution of
information within a team, it can be assumed to be unequal. Sometimes
this problem of unequal distribution is caused because the management
hierarchies are confused with information hierarchies — essential infor-
mation is not given to the persons who actually need them but rather to
those in the chain of command because they have the requisite authority
to get it. Information hiding can be an issue in software projects and
should be tackled head-on. If there is one take-away message, it is that
one needs good communication to build good software.
