7. What should you ask?
What should a CEO ask his CTO?
(VP Engineering, Lead developer, …)
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
8. Stuff that risks your
business or has huge
revenue impact.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
9. Green Shifting.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
11. What is our largest risk?
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
12. How many SPOFs do you have?
(People and technology)
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
13. When was your last Backup? Where is it?
When has it been tested the last time?
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
14. When will we hit the wall?
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
15. KPI/ SLA
• Availability
• Bugs in Release
• Bugs found before
• Time to Market
• Do we hit (when?) the wall?
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
16. War on Talent
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
17. Do not hire IT personal
if you don’t know what you do.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
18. When your recruiting pipeline is empty
3 months recruiting
+ 3 months notice period
+ 1 current month
= 7 months from need to filled
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
19. Very good developers are 20% more
expensive, but 2000% more productive.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
20. 30-50% of programmers with
programming experience can not program.
Cargo Cultists.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
21. Do not let anyone here developers
without a coding test.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
22. Development is a solved problem
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
23. Waterfall
Resources
($$$)
Time Scope
Kanban (Lean) Agile (Scrum)
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
24. Time to market => more money
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
25. Time to Market
Largest lever NOT in development.
Largest lever in decision phase.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
27. 1 women needs 9 months to deliver a baby.
9 women do deliver a baby in 1 month.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
28. 1. Feature
2. Feature
1. Feature
2. Feature
3. Feature
4. Feature
5. Feature
3. Feature
4. Feature
5. Feature
Time Time
Parallel Serial
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
29. Market
Opportunity
Feeling of
urgency
Time relative to competitor
Reinertsen 1998
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
30. Top Management Attention of top
possible impact management for a
project
Reinertsen 1998
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
31. Productivity
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
32. The most important factor in software work is
the quality of the programmers.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
33. The best programmers are up to 28 times
better than the worst programmers.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
34. Developers need 15 minutes
to reach the ZONE.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
36. Tools.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
37. No silver bullet.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
38. Performance
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
39. Scope
Time
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
40. Scope
Time
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
41. Scope
∞
Time
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
42. Technical Debt
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
43. Technical
Debt
Time
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
44. Technical
Debt
WALL
Rewrite
Time
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
45. Work left
Technical
to do
Debt
Pressure
Time
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
46. Lines of
Code
BAD
Ok
GOOD
Time
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
47. How long does it take?
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
48. Software estimation is usually done by the
wrong people.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
49. Cone of Uncertainty
4x
1x Time
Software Complete
Detailed Design
Complete
UI Complete
Requirements
Complete
0,25x
Initial Idea
Steve McConnell
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
50. Bad Cone of Uncertainty
4x
1x Time
Requirements
Complete
0,25x
Initial Idea
Steve McConnell
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
51. 10% 50% 90%
Probability
Estimation
/Time
1. July 1. August 1. October
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
52. Probability
of Completion
100%
Time or Effort
Point in Time
X
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
53. Brooks Law:
Adding people to a late project makes it later.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
54. DON’T FORGET!
Maintenance typically consumes
40 to 80 percent of software costs.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
56. Sources
“Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art”,
Steve McConnell
“Developing Products in Half the Time”,
Donald G. Reinertsen
“The Mythical Man-Month”,
Frederick P. Brooks
“Peopleware”,
Tom DeMarco
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT
