Organisational health check
Frequently, we adhere to established practices or continue with routines that have been in place for an extended period. It’s not common for us to allocate time to assess our processes and tools, identifying areas for improvement and expressing our aspirations for enhancement. The structure of our software teams has undergone continuous evolution in recent decades, aiming to address the challenge of expediting time-to-market while maintaining a reasonable investment.
An Organizational Health Check can be applied to different extents. It allows us to scrutinize individual projects in isolation, examine specific departments, or evaluate the entire organization as a whole.
- Examining the role of the software development organization
Is the software development organization a fundamental component seamlessly integrated into the core functions of the overall organization, or does it primarily serve a supportive role? Additionally, are there other engineering functions, or is the primary product software only? - Analysing processes and tools
What is the current status of the processes and the usage of tools. There is no judgement in this phase, just an observation. Keep in mind that there is no good or bad at this moment, for some organizations a planning on a piece of paper might still be the best solution - Analysing the processes and tools
What is the current status of the processes and the usage of tools. Are the tools used supporting the processes, how well and consistent are they used. There is no judgement in this phase, just an observation. Keep in mind that there is no good or bad at this moment, for some organizations a planning on a piece of paper might still be the best tool. - Setting the target
Based on the position of the software development organization, a target will be set where we want to be over a period of time. What do we want to improve, and what do we want to keep as is.
Efficient code development
The question ‘why does it take to long’ is to believed the most frequently asked question to software engineers. Although there is efficiency gain to be achieved by reducing scope and using better engineering tools, most effect will be the reduction to need coding a lot of software. This is an every evolving world and to name a few topics that need to be considered:
- Components
reusing software as components - Open Source
The use of Open Source software where possible - Generative AI
Relatively new, but a very promising area to look into