What are some of the innovations in software management science?
Today there are new capabilities and software management technologies that we’ve never seen before. We can measure and predict software projects “in-flight” — to better than 90% accuracy, very early on. It’s a lot easier to benchmark historical performance against industry trends today — we’ve pruned out practices that didn’t work as well. It’s easier to manage the implementation of software packages, selecting software vendors on competitive bids and manage outsourced relationships. The list goes on. But there’s one thing to note: Tom DeMarco was right when he said, “IT is change. It consists of so much more than writing and testing code. The real and always difficult challenge of IT is to transform the organization. A new program or system is merely a vehicle for this. The hard part is not getting the software to work but rather getting agreement on it before the fact and effecting the necessary changes to the company and its procedures afterward.” That’s where modern negotiation s
