Communications of the ACM

I L L U S T R A T I O N B Y M I C H E L A N G E L U S

˲ Agile, Scrum, and Extreme Programming development methodologies; 12

˲ Critical Chain methodology and tools for reducing lead times of software development projects and improving due-date reliability; 1, 7

˲ Lean techniques to create a frugal IT organization; 2

˲ DevOps techniques; 8 and
Yet another approach is to priori-
tize software development requests
through some prioritization criterion.
The extent these conventional ap-
proaches begin to close the software
value gap is variable and usually not
too great. Hence, they leave room for
further improvement.

Scope of the Software Value Gap

To understand why software develop-
ment and maintenance do not create
enough value for the organization we
list and analyze the generic problems
associated with the typical IT develop-
ment and maintenance environment.

Analyzing them through the focused Current Reality Tree, or fCRT, points to the root causes of the software value gap. 11 We start by listing the generic undesirable effects, or UDEs, associated with software solutions development and maintenance, 6 in uncompromising language:

˲ Software-solutions development does not create enough value for the organization (the leading UDE);

˲ Inadequate software solutions productivity;

˲ Cost of the IT division too high;

˲ Delivered software solutions often abandoned;

˲ Software solutions in the “realiza-
tion portfolio”c not maximizing value;

˲ No effective selection mechanism for software portfolio selection;

˲ Excessive ineffective time of IT developers;

˲ Requirements not properly defined;

˲ Software solutions that meet needs only partially;

˲ Lead times too long;
˲Performance measurement lack-
ing or misleading;
˲ No effective focus on value;
˲Internal customers’ involvement
insufficient; and
˲ Lack of an efficient, effective meth-
odology for managing IT resources.