Industrial-Strength Management Strategies

As our industry undertakes ever larger development projects, the number of defects occurring in delivered software increases exponentially. Drawing on his experiences in the defense industry, the author offers nine best practices to improve the management of large software systems: (1) risk management; (2) agreement on interfaces; (3) formal inspections; (4) metrics-based scheduling and management; (5) binary quality gates at inch/pebble level; (6) program-wide visibility of progress vs. plan; (7) defect tracking against quality targets; (8) configuration management; and (9) people-aware management accountability.