Despite the available tools, many companies still overlook the value of electronic issue management
Mason, OH—May 28, 2008—According to results from the Seapine Software Quality-Ready Assessment, 20 percent of organizations have limited or no ability to trace development artifacts. Without easy access to defects, issues, and tasks, organizations must guess about the state of a project.
Lack of visibility of issues results in greater risk of defects and missed deadlines. Thirty-four percent of companies complete their application development on time and on budget less than 75 percent of the time. If these organizations release once a year, this means they are only on time and on budget once every four years.
These numbers highlight the issues facing development organizations. “Software quality and reliability are lifelines to customer loyalty and profitability,” says Richard Riccetti, president and CEO, Seapine Software. “Our experience shows that given the choice between higher cost, longer delivery time, or poorer quality, customers will choose to protect quality.”
Even companies that use electronic issue management are not using it to its full capabilities. Twenty-seven percent still use home-grown solutions. Only 14 percent of organizations have tracking solutions that include item linking and automated notifications.
Internal solutions often carry hidden support costs. The effort of developing and administering these solutions overloads scarce resources. Without linking and automated notifications, organizations spend too much time manually entering information and checking for updates.
To overcome the challenges of issue management, Riccetti offers these suggestions.
- Organizations that communicate issues verbally or through paper-based systems need to invest in electronic issue management. This ensures that everyone has access to the same information.
- Organizations that use internal solutions should evaluate a commercial issue tracking package. This will free resources for revenue-producing development.
- Organizations that have invested in issue management need to automate their processes. If the current solution does not support linking and automatic notification, they should investigate other options. Automation reduces lag time, improves efficiency, and reduces the risks that occur when people step outside of the process.
About the Quality-Ready Assessment
The QRA is a high-level evaluation tool that helps development and QA organizations measure the state of their quality readiness. To date, nearly 1,000 individuals from a variety of industries have completed the survey.
About Seapine Software
With over 8,500 customers worldwide, Seapine Software, Inc. is a leading provider of quality-centric application lifecycle management solutions. Headquartered in Mason, Ohio, with offices in Europe and the Asia-Pacific, Seapine solutions help companies reliably and efficiently develop quality software applications. Seapine’s products support best practices, integrate into all popular development environments, and run on Microsoft Windows®, Linux®, Sun Solaris®, and Apple Macintosh® platforms.
Contact
Keith Vanden Eynden
Seapine Software, Inc.
Phone: (513) 701-1552
[email protected]
