Software Business
Executive Report

October 22, 2007

Quality: The Missing Link in Software Development 

Brad Johnson, director of product marketing for Lifecycle Quality Management, is responsible for the product strategy and marketing of Borland’s Lifecycle Quality Management solution. In this role, Mr. Johnson is dedicated to improving the project success rate for IT teams with a comprehensive quality management solution that supports quality early in the lifecycle with complete, testable requirements, helps developers build higher quality code, and leverages powerful test automation to improve efficiency and reduce costs.

By Brad Johnson, director of product marketing, Lifecycle Quality Management, Borland Software

Imagine if businesses across all industries -- from pharmaceutical drug testing, to automobiles, to iPod's -- waited until their products came off the manufacturing line to determine how well they functioned. While we can argue that technological advances have moved us far beyond the days of a "trial and error" approach, the reality is that software development continues to be more art than science. Consequently, p roject cancellations and failures have become ubiquitous and cost overruns, schedule slippages, low quality and poor reliability have become disturbing norms in the software industry.

This isn’t to say that technology companies haven’t been hard at work developing tools and solutions designed to improve software application development processes and the state of software quality. In fact, it's quite the contrary. Software development organizations have been and will continue to be under increased pressure to adopt more mature, comprehensive and proactive approaches to ensuring software quality. While traditional approaches to achieving quality relegate most software test and validation to late in the application lifecycle , many IT organizations are now placing an increased emphasis on testing more effectively and more frequently throughout the software delivery lifecycle.

Certainly vendors offering automated software testing products have made strides in this area, however, the fact remains that IT organizations still have no level of visibility or control over what is actually happening during the development process. It's 2007 -- with all the knowledge, resources and technology available to us today, why are companies still struggling to consistently deliver high-quality software?

One reason is that many project teams still operate as individual “silos” that utilize their own approach to quality. This results in disconnected practices that foster inconsistencies throughout the development process. Even worse, many development teams still rely on largely manual and homegrown approaches, such as documenting requirements and test plans in spreadsheets and digging through mountains of logs files to isolate problems, and depending on disconnected bug tracking systems to align QA and Dev teams. These types of manual, disconnected approaches add to the cost and complexity of quality practices, leading to the loss of quality-related information, duplication of efforts, poor testing coverage of critical functionality, limited visibility into overall application quality, and ultimately, unpredictable quality across projects. Companies need to strive to adopt standard processes for defining, measuring, managing and improving software quality that begin at the beginning of software projects, not depend on what happens at the end.

Instead of being based on guesswork, “Tribal Knowledge” and anecdotal evidence, companies are now beginning to implement more efficient and effective software development processes that are based on metrics and objective measurements. What's more, today we see that more companies are beginning to hold developers accountable for software quality in ways they weren't before. Instead of leaving matters to the QA team to deal with during the test phase, many companies are distributing quality responsibility across the development lifecycle by providing the means for developers to address quality within their established processes and ultimately focus their energies on "getting software right" from the start.

One successful approach to delivering quality software has emerged called Lifecycle Quality Management (LQM), which helps organizations infuse quality throughout the entire software development lifecycle. This approach encompasses four core quality processes—plan, verify and validate, improve, and manage:  

Plan (Define and Prioritize)

• Analyze and classify requirements: High-quality requirements should be delivered and prioritized based on business needs. This prioritization must then trace all the way to the most finite unit or object-level activities to assure teams are united in their goals.
• Perform risk analysis and prioritize quality activities: Because risk is inherent in any software development project, those who analyze the risk and develop their project plans and quality plans in light of those risks have the potential to minimize their impact.
• Define and build quality plan: Without a map, it is hard to successfully navigate new areas. Organizations should be careful to define application quality goals with agreed-upon criteria and measures that meet the application business needs.

Verify and Validate

• Process audits: Defined processes enable teams to function efficiently and effectively, since they can see what is required of them in their project role, and help to ensure that software development teams follow the selected processes and procedures. Consistent reviews of process lead to consistent improvements in efficiency.
• Peer reviews: Two heads are better than one when it comes to addressing most challenges. The same is true when it comes to ensuring software quality. Best practices for software quality include peer reviews of all types of work products (requirements, design, code, tests) to ensure they conform to customer requirements and organization standards.
• Work product analysis: If quality requirements are not defined early, major architecture errors can be made, particularly when it comes to performance expectations. Aspects of the architecture should be examined and design choices made before much of the system coding begins. This type of early analysis—using static models or simulations—can provide the assurance that a design can confidently be committed to code and that quality requirement can be met.
• Create and execute test cases and suites: Creating appropriate, prioritized and efficient tests is the “art” of Quality Assurance professionals. Harnessing the process of testing is often the difficult and mundane aspect. So, effectively managing the creation, management and execution of all manner of testing – manual or automated, functional or non-functional – becomes the challenge of all organizations. However, this is where repeatability, visibility and economies of scale really enable consistent results from project to project.

Improve (Analyze and Tune)

• Analyze results of process audits, reviews and tests: With every release, organizations must improve the quality of their software projects by analyzing the results of verification and validation activities and comparing them with their expected outcomes as defined in the quality plan and in specific requirements. And, it isn’t just about analysis of technology issues. Analyzing the process itself leads to continuous efficiency gains.
• Diagnose and pinpoint issues: In the short-term, analysis of defects to determine their root causes may be perceived as time-consuming and costly, but it can save significant resources in the long run. Finding issues should be the preliminary goal of testing; fixing the problems completes the process.
• Update work products and re-verify: The final phase of the improvement process area is validating that improvements actually achieve their goals. The requirements, design, code or test need to be repaired, and then reviewed or tested again, to ensure that the repair correctly handled the defect.

Manage

• Status tracking and reporting: Managers must have the necessary lifecycle quality information in hand at each stage of the SDLC to make the right decisions. Organizations must be able to obtain real-time reports on quality status and project progress, including information about the results of reviews and testing, coverage, and defect find-fix rates to enable efficient resource management and further understand release readiness.
• Control all phases of quality management from plan to improve: As software travels through the delivery lifecycle, organizations need support for all of their quality processes, yet software development organizations have limited time and resources. To minimize costs and time to market, all resources need to be managed efficiently. Control systems enable organizations to effectively manage activities and assets that drive quality results.

The Future of Software Delivery

We are starting to see the shape of a very different future for software development – not only how it is created, managed and delivered, but how it is able to connect all stakeholders in an effort to improve quality and performance. By employing LQM strategies, stakeholders are able to increase control, predictability, visibility and efficiency over the entire software delivery process. LQM achieves this through a multi-pronged approach, which enables companies to infuse quality throughout the entire software development lifecycle. This approach enables teams to consistently deliver high- quality applications and services that meet business requirements, while systematically reducing costs, risk, defects, rework and time-to-market.

New advancements in LQM technology have the ability to help companies be successful at whatever “software delivery” means for their organization. Whether its service-enabling legacy applications, developing new applications, customizing packaged applications or some combination thereof. Let’s get good at software delivery. Let’s make it more of a managed business process that’s based on metrics and objective measurements, not just guess work and anecdotal evidence. And finally, let’s find an established process, support and automate it with tools, and get some confidence that our output is going to be reliable, predictable and of high-quality.

Richard P. Farrell is President of Tangent Knowledge Systems.  Having been responsible for sales, and business development for nearly 25 years, Richard brings a tremendous depth of experience and results to his audiences. His passionate, provocative and interactive style encourages audience participation, learning, and improvement while providing practical, usable “time tested” information. Richard stresses a non-selling posture that allows the sales person to play the role of a “change agent” rather than a product centric transactional sales person. Contact him at 773-404-7915 or www.tangentknowledge.com.

By Rick Farrell, President, Tangent Knowledge Systems

Hiring an effective salesperson is probably one of the most difficult hiring tasks in corporate America. Most managers err on talking too much about the company and not asking the tough questions to determine if a candidate can sell and more importantly, will he sell. Since salespeople are usually charming and persuasive, they frequently do their best selling at the interview and it goes down from there. In today’s marketplace the classic selling skills that the majority of companies use in selecting salespeople are grossly obsolete and ineffective. Skills like being upbeat and optimistic, a warm and personable personality, dogged determination and persistence, a friendly and a talkative disposition, eager to please and serve are characteristics that no longer ensure success and quite often are characteristics that will predict mediocrity in the field.

One thing that definitely hasn’t changed in determining the fate of a candidate is that they still must have a passion for success and it greatly helps to be money motivated. They must be goal oriented, have a strong self-concept, feel good about themselves and their company, and have a commitment to do whatever it takes to be successful. Today’s market demands a totally different type of salesperson. Characteristics like low need for questioning and listening skills, and a high money approval, decisive decision making, advanced threshold are the skill sets that will predict success.

The leading success indicators are rarely examined or closely exposed. They will be instrumental in predicting a fast ramp up time, an ability to walk away from unrealistic opportunities, healthy closing ratios, holding margins and effectively translating value, understanding the compelling reasons that would motivate someone to change or not, shorter selling cycles and the ability to build relationships and understanding.

The five key characteristics and predictors of performance are buy cycle, need for approval, controlling emotions, money concept and sales beliefs.

Buy Cycle

Because salespeople who have long buy orders tend to overly “think things over” in their own personal purchasing patterns, they will attract prospects who are also undecisive in their decision making. This promotes excepting pull-backs, put-offs and procrastination and will have a direct impact on poor closing ratios. To expose these negative characteristics, ask candidates about their last major purchase and what the buying process was.

Need for Approval

The classic portrayal of a salesperson that companies look for is someone who is very enthusiastic and friendly, wants people to like them, persuasive and talkative, intelligent and persistant. The problem is most salespeople have taken this art form to an extreme. They aren’t willing to challenge prospects and risk losing approval. They avoid asking tough questions that will get them the truth. They shy away from healthy confrontation and getting their own needs met as opposed to getting the more important need of making the sale. They are more concerned for clients to like them rather than to respect them. These types are constantly used by their prospects for their expertise and solutions. We suggest that you ask sales candidates how they challenge prospects, how they ask tough questions, how they determine the viability of their opportunities and how they determine if they are wasting their time.

Controls Emotions

Salespeople who effectively control their emotions sell like a change agent. They take a non-selling posture, ask questions that are unbiased and neutral, aren’t afraid to hear no (they actually encourage it in some cases), and are in the moment where they can listen intently for what is being said and more importantly, what isn’t being said. They sell from a position of a business strategist who gathers information to build a business case as opposed to building a product case. They have a quiet confidence instead of an excitable overly emotional posture, they are more concerned with understanding than convincing, and they allow the prospect to self-discover their own conclusions without pushing their own agenda. They aren’t emotionally involved in the outcome so they minimize all the typical static of self-talk – “I wonder when he’ll make-up his mind, what if I don’t make this sale, what am I going to spend my commission check on, and what am I going to do if he wants to think it over.” Find out from sales candidates what their sales strategy is when they go into a sales call. More than likely, if they don’t have a systematic sales methodology, they will tend to be needy, salesy, and emotionally involved and out of control.

Money Concept

Be aware of how the sales candidate handles the salary negotiation and if holds his ground. Ask him how he determines budgets with his clients. Find out what is his personal concept of value when he shops. If he is a bottom feeder and you sell a service that is a premium, than this could be a real red flag with this candidates ability to hold margins.

Compiled Sales Beliefs

These the general sales beliefs that salespeople have that can negatively affect their performance on the job. The following are more of some of the more negative beliefs: It is important to educate my prospects.

• Prospects are honest.
• A good salesperson never gives up.
• It’s ok if my prospect thinks it over, they will eventually buy from me.
• It’s ok if my prospect shops around.
• A good salesperson does what the prospect tells him to do.
• Sending product information can forward the sale.
• All I need to do is to understand my prospect’s requirements and specifications to make the sale.
• Any lack of results is due to the marketplace and the economy.
• I have to call on purchasing agents before I can call on decision makers.
• I don’t need a sales process to be successful.
• Prospecting is a necessary evil.
• A good presentation is what makes the sale.

Make sure you ask sales candidate’s questions that will make them describe their sales process step by step. Ask behavioral question that will expose their weakness in asking questions and prematurely giving out information that makes them lose control in the sales process.

In summary, the hiring process should be a stringent process of asking questions and trying to expose sales weaknesses that will ultimately cause salespeople to be non-productive and ineffective. To avoid costly hiring problems we always advise our clients to hire slow and fire fast. Many companies use the interview predominantly to measure, chemistry, likeability, general sales experience, suitability of past experience and company and cultural fit. They so often fail in really determining can this candidate sell and more importantly, will he sell. Does he have commitment, desire, and passion? Does he have what it takes to maintain margins, establish strong relationships that are built on trust and business strategy, will he have healthy sales cycle, can he translate value instead of price, and can the candidate qualify and disqualify opportunities without wasting time. Since these skill sets are difficult to determine, we recommend hiring managers use sales assessment tools to supplement their own findings from the interview process.

SLAM 2008: San Francisco
Sales, Licensing, Alliances & Marketing for Software and SaaS Companies
April 3-4, 2008 -- Sheraton Gateway San Francisco Airport

Call for papers will be open October 24-December 3. To be notified sign up for the Software Business e-Newsletter.

Go to www.SLAMConference.com for more details.

InfoNow Secures $6 Million in Series a Venture Financing

InfoNow collects, processes and enriches channel sales and inventory data for companies that sell through channel partner networks. Since early 2006, with a new management team in place, InfoNow has completely restructured its organization and transformed its offering to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. Investing in its SaaS solution has enabled the company to significantly reduce operating costs while broadening its market opportunity.

Significant company achievements and developments under the new leadership include:

• Delivered revenue growth in the first half of 2007 of approximately 17% over the same period in 2006
• Reduced overall cost structure and developed operational efficiencies to deliver positive cash flow during the past twelve months
• Grew client base to 47 customers, including leading companies such as AMD, Polycom, APC and Kingston Europe
• Improved the company’s infrastructure and system reliability and availability through increased capital investment
• Expanded product offering with solutions for managing rebate, pricing and sales credit assignment data in addition to point-of-sale and inventory data
• Received U.S. Patent Office notice of allowance of patentable technology for InfoNow's geo-spatial business entity matching technology that provides entity identification rates significantly superior than competitive alternatives

“InfoNow offers high-value solutions for both manufacturers and channel sales organizations, and has a clear technology advantage over alternatives,” said Tim Connor, partner at Sequel Venture Partners. “By moving to a software-as-a-service delivery model, the management team has increased sales momentum and positioned the company to further capitalize on this largely untapped market.”

Contact www.infonow.com.  

Infusion Software Inc., provider of the best-selling customer relationship management (CRM) software for small businesses, has secured funding of $9 million from MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm. This round represents Infusion’s first round of venture financing.

Infusion Software will use the financing to accelerate customer acquisition via increased sales and marketing efforts and to enhance its award-winning CRM software built specifically for true small businesses that want to grow quickly and profitably. True small businesses (TSB) are owner-run organizations with 2-50 employees that have grown organically. These businesses do not have layers like larger organizations, and thus automation of business processes via easy-to-use technology is highly desired.

Infusion Software’s product, Infusion CRM, is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that redefines small business CRM. Infusion CRM answers the need among small businesses for one comprehensive solution that centralizes, organizes and automates lead generation, lead conversion and client fulfillment, enabling them to automate their marketing, sales, and customer management. Infusion CRM was developed to provide a centralized customer management system that goes far beyond any other CRM software available on the market, with critical modules including: e-commerce, lead capture, email marketing, click tracking, billing and collections and other functions of sales, marketing and customer service that are not found in other CRM software programs.

Contact www.infusionsoft.com.

“Momentum for the AppExchange continues to accelerate as thousands of customers of all sizes are using it to quickly and easily extend Salesforce with additional on-demand business applications,” said Clarence So, senior vice president of marketing, salesforce.com. “Rapid adoption of on-demand applications shows that customers worldwide are rejecting lengthy, expensive and complex software implementations. Wrapped Apps’ service can be used in conjunction with the Force.com platform to help ISVs who have already invested time and resources in developing traditional software applications go on-demand.”

The Wrapped Apps Service Delivery Platform can usually bring applications onto the AppExchange within 30 days, enabling companies to take advantage of existing software investments and focus on their core features and functionality. The Wrapped Apps platform addresses a range of technical issues for on-demand deployment, streamlining the on-demand process for ISVs.

Alain L. Mercier, CEO of Wrapped Apps, said, “The AppExchange is the world’s first marketplace for on-demand applications, and as a leading platform to enable Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, we are committed to helping companies bring their solutions to the AppExchange as quickly as possible.”

Force.com is the on-demand platform for the next generation of business applications. Force.com reinvents traditional customization and integration and enables the creation of a whole new generation of on-demand applications that go beyond client/server computing. Force.com allows applications to be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com's AppExchange marketplace, enabling all the innovation that Force.com unleashes to benefit the entire on-demand community.

Contact www.wrappedapps.com.

Market2Lead, a provider of software-as-a-service (SaaS) B2B automated marketing solutions that accelerate demand and revenue growth, has licensed its technology to Rainmaker Systems, Inc., a leading provider of sales and marketing solutions combining hosted application software and execution services. In addition, Rainmaker has made a multi-million dollar investment in Market2Lead, which will continue to market its SaaS solutions directly to marketers.

Through an OEM agreement, Market2Lead technology components will enhance Rainmaker’s LeadWorks on-demand marketing automation application. The enhancements will appear in the next release of LeadWorks, providing robust insight into business trending, enhanced quality of leads generated from marketing campaigns and lower costs associated with nurturing those leads that are not ready to purchase. The OEM agreement provides continuing royalties to Market2Lead for the use of its technology.

Michael Silton, CEO, Rainmaker, said, “Market2Lead has developed unique and powerful technology that will be quite valuable to users of our LeadWorks solution. In particular, its technology components will enhance LeadWorks’ prospective customer profiling and automatic prospect nurturing capabilities. As result, our clients will see even better lead-to-sales conversion rates. We’re pleased to enter this strategic partnership with Market2Lead.”

Contact www.market2lead.com.

HP plans to expand its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering across its Business Technology Optimization (BTO) portfolio to help customers quickly and cost-effectively maximize the value of their software implementations.

The HP BTO software portfolio helps customers better manage their IT projects and services, ensure the quality and performance of their IT applications, and monitor their online businesses.

SaaS, also known as software “on demand,” is a model in which software is developed, hosted and operated for use by customers over the Internet. Customers do not own the software itself, but rather pay to use it.

As part of its SaaS offering, HP deploys experts to help customers remotely manage the performance and availability of business-critical applications. Since customers do not have to make long-term investments in technology infrastructure or staff training to use HP SaaS, it can help free up scarce IT resources to focus on other priorities. Customers can begin using software delivered through HP SaaS in a matter of weeks and, therefore, receive business benefits from their IT initiatives faster.

“HP SaaS enables customers to immediately gain the benefit of our software without significant start-up costs and training,” said Marc Olesen, vice president, Software-as-a-Service, HP. “With our BTO software offering, customers can focus on their critical IT business initiatives while HP focuses on enabling their IT organization to operate more efficiently.”

OCTOBER
October 22-26 -- STARWEST 2007 Software Testing, Analysis & Review, Anaheim, Calif. Contact www.sqe.com/starwest

October 23-25 – EAC: Enterprise Architecture Conference, Las Vegas, Nev. Contact www.sharedinsights.com

NOVEMBER
November 5-7 – Customer Contact Conference, Phoenix, Az. Contact www.sharedinsights.com

November 6-8 – Portals, Collaboration & Content, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. Contact www.sharedinsights.com

November 7-9 - SIIA OnDemand, San Jose, Calif. Contact www.siia.net

November 13-15 – BPM: Business Process Management Conference, San Diego, Calif. Contact www.sharedinsights.com

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