Christmas soon, and every year the same concern: what gifts to offer? Ideally, the one that will please most and that will not ruin us.
I was on a forum trying to find information about an MP3 player when a post caught my attention: someone had a problem with a game console and asked if replacing the faulty component would extend the life of the console.
I was surprised: I did not know you could even replace a component on a console. If some component on your PC fails, you change the motherboard. And most often, you end up completely changing the machine if it is a bit old. Beyond 3 years of age, it becomes difficult to find spare parts, and in any case, it is often more attractive financially to buy a newer model. Continue reading →

Following the previous post What is the first question ? about the two major questions concerning application quality – costs vs. risks – someone asked if there were some processes or best practices that contribute to these two objectives.

Is there a “best of both worlds” way to produce free defect software without exceeding budget and schedule? Continue reading →

I work with some providers who sometimes call me when one of their customers has a problem with an application.

What is the first question you ask in a meeting with a customer?

• Which technologies in your application ?
• Is it a big application ?
• Is this application complex ?

No. I see that every time. And this is a natural reaction: first, qualify the application. Sure, you want to know if you can adress the needs of this customer. Sure, your partner looks to evaluate what could be the size of a possible deal. Continue reading →

Back to raw metrics.

A customer wants you to audit the quality of an application or a portfolio of applications. He expects for an answer to a very precise question. For example:

• This application is an important part of my budget: is it possible to reduce its costs and how?
• I have been asekd to take the maintenance of this application. I only know that it is a complex application. What do I have to expect?
• Is it possible to outsource this application? What are the risks?
• We are going to merge with this entity. What systems should we use? Theirs or ours?

There are two different questions in these questions:

• What are the costs?
• What are the risks? Continue reading →

In the previous post Measure and Control, I said that quantitative metrics such as the number of lines of code (LOC) or the measure of cyclomatic complexity (CC) were:

• easily available – in every software of code analysis ;
• exact – these measures do not vary (too much) depending of these tools ;
• easily understandable for the management.

Does this mean that qualitative measures would be difficult, inaccurate and poorly useful? In fact, everything depends of what you want to do, thus of the use case. Today, let’s see an ideal use case: Continuous Improvement. Continue reading →

« You can’t control what you can’t measure » (Tom de Marco)

I explained in the previous post The 3 costs that code analysis tools provided us a large number of qualitative information while quantitative metrics were less numerous, but very useful. This opinion is not always shared.

Raw metrics are easy to obtain with the great majority of code analysis tools. Generally, such a tool begins by presenting a global quality note which aggregates various rules of good practices of programming, design, documentation, etc. This simple note gives a general overview of the quality of the application, but is in fact rather subjective: it depends very strongly on the tool. Continue reading →