Re: Re: SIP is "just another Six Sigma measure"?

On 2003.01.21, Dan Palanza <[email protected]> wrote:
> In accounting jargon, where the unique application is a function of
> current costs, the universal application is a function long term
> capital investment. My initial argument to Kent is that software ought
> to be more often in the later category.

Dan,

In my experience, business needs don't stay the same for long enough
where a "universal application" can be cost-justified.  They tend to be
orders of magnitude more costly than the "unique application" which is
custom-fit to solve the specific known problems of today without too
much anticipation of future problems which we may or may not need to
solve.

Implementing features to solve problems of tomorrow is like keeping
inventory.  Keeping excessive inventory is waste -- thus, if we can
position ourselves to develop software in a just-in-time fashion,
minimizing the amount of "feature inventory" we keep ... we can react
quicker to our business needs while keeping costs at a minimum.

Since we can't change what we can't measure, we measure things like SIP
to give us an idea of our software-work-in-progress.  This will, at some
future date, convert into "software feature inventory".  Inventory that
we cannot "sell" or features we don't use, is waste.

Again, this is why minimizing SIP /time/ isn't necessarily good.
Sometimes, we might want to look at minimizing SIP /quantity/ instead or
as well as SIP time.  Even if our SIP time is really low (we push
features out the door fast), if those finished goods can't be moved out
of inventory (actually used and value received from the business
customer) then we're just stockpiling inventory at a fast rate.

Perhaps a complimentary measure to SIP would be a finished-goods
inventory measure vs. orders shipped -- how many features are
implemented that are actively used by users vs. are in the product but
aren't being used.  When the latter increases faster than the former, it
should raise some flags ...

-- Dossy

-- 
Dossy Shiobara                       mail: [email protected] 
Panoptic Computer Network             web: http://www.panoptic.com/ 
  "He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own
    folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on." (p. 70)

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