Spring 2007 Issue of Methods & Tools

In this issue you will find an interesting experience report on software process improvement, a detailed how-to article on modelling by one of the father of Information Engineering, an insightful reflection on how to build trust in a hierarchy relationship and finally a approach to improve the release of software products.

Spring 2007 issue's content:
* Process Improvement – Is it a Lottery?
* Strategic Modeling for Rapid Delivery of Enterprise Architecture
* Fear of Intervention - How Subordinates Grow to be Entrepreneurs
* A Methodology to Support Software Release Decisions

40 pages of software development knowledge.

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Slow Developer Growth in the USA?

A recent Evans Data survey was discussed in an InfoWorld article "Software developer growth slows in North America". It tells us that the worldwide software developer population is expected to grow from 14.5 million now to 19.5 million in 2010. North America will account for only 18 percent of those jobs in 2010, down from 23 percent today. While the North American share of the developer work force will decrease, the Asia-Pacific share will increase to close to 45 percent from 37 percent today. The share of developers from EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) will slip from 35 percent to 30 percent. The share from Latin America will remain flat at 6 percent. The growth rate for the developer population in Asia-Pacific over the next three to five years is expected to be 15 percent, 8 to 10 percent in EMEA, but only 3 to 4 percent in North America.

A 4 percent growth rate is not bad when the overall population is growing at around one percent. In 2005, a Business Week article mentioned that recent growth rate in computer jobs was 7.5 %. If the InfoWorld article title seems negative for North America and Europe, but we should not forget that demographic trends for both regions are also signalling a slow growth of working population that starts already from a smaller base. This is the contrary of the Asia region where there are already more than 2 billion people with a younger age pyramid. If you are interested by this topic. The US Census Bureau has an interesting Web site with a database containing statistical tables of demographic data for 228 countries and areas of the world.

The Agile Software Development Toolbox

When agile software development meets pataphysics, you got an elegant new set of tools for software development.

Don't Click Here

The current Methods & Tools poll shows that a majority of participants develop 75% or more of their new applications with a browser as the interface. As Logitech just commemorated its 25-year anniversary, it is time to think about the user interface and the role of the mice in our interaction with computers. The first mice astonished people. There are many stories telling how people misused them, sometimes inventing the trackball before it was needed ;o). We could laugh at this, but it is not always easy to change the way we behave. To test this fact, I suggest that you spend some time on the Web site dontclick.it . As its name suggests, you will surf on this site without clicking on your mouse buttons. Have fun ;o)

More Offshoring than Outsourcing in Software Development

Outsourcing is often closely related to offshoring in software development, but you can outsource onshore and you can create offshore subsidiaries. This seems to be the current trend for large occidental organisation that want to profit for lower costs in countries like India, but maintain a high control on the process. However, developers in Europe or North America feel no differences if their Asian "competitor" work for a subsidiary or for another organisation. A recent poll from Methods & Tools wanted to know if applications are developed exclusively inside organisations or if outsourcing software development services are used.

The majority of the 346 respondents were equally split between those that are not using outsourcing and those that use it, partially or completely. Complete outsourcing is done by only 6% of participants. There is a need to keep internal expertise when outsourcing is used. The phenomenon of outsourcing of IT services is well known. An article of McKinsey Quarterly estimated the global market for IT and business process outsourcing to $30 billion. The part of software development in this growing market is less known and discussed. In another recent survey published by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), 60% of the participants were offshoring software development efforts and half of them were doing it with external providers.

Get the complete results of this survey with references on Methods & Tools