Setting The Right Expectations or Project Fails

Business Information System (or BIS) is a software or set of applications that assist in daily business processing activities and management reporting requirements.

Before implementing any software or systems to an existing operation, it is vital to have everyone’s mindset aligned to the same expectations to improve collaboration while minimizing miscommunications.

Take advantage of the meeting time with your vendor so that you and your team can understand each other more. Also to establish relationships and make others like you first.

For any software to improve and add value, first, it has to be profitable to the software vendor. Like any expected human behavior, if there is no motivation for a development to proceed, it will stop or being abandoned. But if the software continues to improve, mature and add richness to it, the benefits are to the users of the software.

The fact is: There’s no such thing as a perfect software.

The perfection happens when users understand how the software works and take advantage of it.

The Way Datum Works

In Datum, we are highly motivated towards our software and we believe strongly that market-driven products are the way to go.

We love our clients because they pay us – not exactly. But because they are the domain experts. Their detailed experience mesmerize and inspire us to build solutions that empowers them to be on the competitive edge. Its our passion.

To achieve highest ROI in the software, is to first start to use it as soon as possible.

Being said so, our approach is to get the system running live first and then implement the suggestions (or wish-list) from the users. The bare minimum is to tweak the software to be able to run to replace existing operations that the software is capable of doing.

Coming back to the point, we are very much interested to know exactly the feedbacks and looking forward to improve the software with your team. However, to be realistic, timeframe and budget is part of the equation. Prioritizing is the answer.

Use what works, skip those that aren’t.

We can focus all-day-long on what the software cannot do, but that doesn’t bring any good to both parties. Try avoiding the gumption trap. Remember that motivation is the key to success in any project.

We look forward on collaborating with our clients and continuously building beautiful applications that gets the work done – fast.

In summary, expectations and motivations on both sides will make or break the success of the project.

Why Agile Development?

agile |ˈajəl|

adjectiveable to move quickly and easily : Ruth was as agile as a monkey | figurative his vague manner concealed an agile mind.ORIGIN late Middle English : via French from Latin agilis, from agere‘do.’

Why is it important to software development practices?

Improved success rate for any projects.

In the beginning, most software were developed based on a waterfall approach. The name waterfall was used because the look of a project plan (gantt chart) that resembles a waterfall pattern.

System Analysts will do fact finding (requirements definition) and prepare a thick documentation that may not be easily understood by non-technical people. Once its done, it will take, say 6 months to a year or more to develop.

Once completed, it will then present the software to the users or clients (stakeholders). The chances of the project fails due to various reasons are much higher. Most probably they already forgotten what was the project details.

Success Rate comparison

As for Agile development, results can be seen much quicker. For example, the development team can update latest working software on a weekly basis for the management team to review and users to test, with feedbacks on what to add or change.

Based on the to do list, development team can set the time required for each tasks and a progressive roadmap is formed. Everyone can follow the progress of the roadmap based on daily updates.

This encourages collaboration between development and the stakeholders. However, stakeholders need to commit time to involve in the project and its not optional.

How we incorporate Agile mindset in everything we do?

Writing or documentation in an agile way. No one can write a complete book in one go. It is always by iterations, writing down thoughts and rewriting it.

When writing is done in a group rather than individual, agile is more apparent as everyone in the team can see changes almost immediately and improving it (rewriting). A good example is Wikipedia – an online collaborative documentation from contributors effort.

Everyone in the team is involved and informed.

You may want to incorporate a Wiki software within your organization for multi-purpose journals and documentation. Everyone in your team can participate to write parts of the document such as Standard Operating Procedures (SOP).

The bottom line…

The concept of Agile is not new but an improved way of ensuring higher success rate for projects by improving collaboration and communication between development and stakeholders.