Software teams look for rapid results in downturn

By Jeff Feinman

April 8, 2009 —

Software projects that produce immediate business results have become the order of the day as the continued global recession keeps budgets and resources tight, according to several software development consultants. Additionally, even though many companies, such as Intel and Microsoft, have been downsizing, developers can utilize time without a day job to learn new technologies and create innovative software, the consultants said.

Efforts like supply chain management or automation improvements have continued on through the recession, even though many other software initiatives may be canceled or delayed. If the payback on a project isn’t beneficial or if project costs are fuzzy, an organization’s management is not likely to carry it out in this economic environment, according to technology consultant and analyst Larry O’Brien.

“Right now, everyone’s focused on controlling costs and looking at that bottom line,” said O’Brien, who writes the Windows & .NET Watch column for SD Times. “What’s been surprising to me is that even companies that have been hard hit are continuing with projects that have a real concrete return on investment. I sort of expected to lose a couple of clients, but they see those types of projects as important to the bottom line.”

Not only must a project have a definite ROI, that return must be immediate. Dave Locke, director of marketing for IBM Rational, said that one main theme he has seen is that larger-scoped projects are being pushed aside.

“Projects that are not necessarily more risky, but definitely those where I’m expecting return on investments in 12–24 months, those projects are definitely moving to the back of the line,” Locke said. “I’ve got a certain outcome, I’ve got a certain investment I’m going to make; those are the projects that are still being added to the docket for sure.”

Focusing on profit
Patrick Hynds, president of consulting firm CriticalSites and a Microsoft regional director, said that a great deal of an organization’s “frivolous” projects have been canceled or put on the back burner. In recent years, companies may have had efforts to make the lives of their employees easier, but those are being shut down as the emphasis is on profit and not worker comfort. For instance, a collaboration or note-taking system for developers to organize ideas and projects might be replaced with free software or even taking pen and paper, according to Hynds. Projects like restructuring an organization’s architecture or redesigning a website might also be put on hold.

“If I’m a savvy manager and run a team of developers, I don’t want to be working on internal infrastructure. I want to be working on something that clients would pay money for,” Hynds said.

One such manager is Bill Evjen, global head of platform architecture for Thomson Reuters and a Microsoft regional director. Evjen manages a team of approximately 50 developers that creates financial software on the .NET platform for Thomson Reuters. He said that Microsoft has been working to speed up application development by concealing low-level, tedious tasks in the .NET platform. Developers have quicker ways to do things like build data access layers against a database and use REST (representational state transfer) interfaces to simplify the transfer of domain-specific data, he said.

“It’s turned more into a focus on building solutions or capabilities that have a much more immediate effect on revenue, rather than things that may be a few years out in revenue,” Evjen said.

On the IBM side, Locke pointed out the Measured Capability Improvement Framework (MCIF), which can help an organization measure a project’s ROI by reporting project metrics. There has been a surge in sales of MCIF metric-based software and other IBM services that can help businesses justify their investments, according to Locke.

Additionally, there has been an increase in the use of IBM’s collaboration technologies, including the Jazz platform. “People see the immediate value of finding the people they need to work with and finding the artifacts they need to work on faster and more efficiently,” Locke said. “We still see a great trend there.”

Potential downturn in downtime
A rough economy is no place for poorly thought-out or risky software ideas. The consultants interviewed for this story say that entrepreneurs need to be smarter about what they take on.

“In recent years, there were plenty of people who regularly would ask me to build something to compete with eBay, and they had a US$2,000 budget or something crazy like that,” Hynds said. “With those, basically you answer the call, figure out what they’re talking about, and then you realize that this is a waste of your time and they go away. But most of those have dried up completely.”

O’Brien agreed that there has been a dip in new development or projects that have a limited promise in helping the company.

One positive that Hynds brought up is the plethora of time on developers’ hands thanks to the large number of layoffs in the technology industry. The time between jobs can lead to development of new software and applications, Hynds said.

“I think some of the bigger companies over the next 20 years will have gotten their start during this downturn,” Hynds said. “Some developer and some sales guy will both be out of work at the same time, and they’ll get together and create the next big thing.”

Hynds added that the economic downturn is a good place to experiment with new technologies because resources cost less. Some of the technologies Hynds mentioned include Microsoft’s Silverlight and Surface multi-touch product that lets users manipulate digital content with hand gestures and motions.

Additionally, there is a need for developers and software consultants to keep their skills up to date, learn new ones, or contribute to open-source projects to increase their visibility in an insecure job market, according to O’Brien. That can benefit the careers of individual developers or groups of developers, and also lead to a great deal of innovation.

“Will some people take advantage of having extra time and become entrepreneurs, start new software companies, and develop innovative products?” O’Brien asked. “I’m optimistic, and I think that will happen.”

While many companies have been downsizing and some development teams have taken a hit, Thomson Reuters’ Evjen said his team has actually been expanding because of growing interest in mutual funds and other collective investment funds through the economic downturn. He recently hired eight additional people in his St. Louis office, and he said that he expects even more people to join his development team. Because of the many layoffs throughout the technology industry, Evjen has seen an increase in talent among the candidates available in the current job market.

“I’m seeing people that I would have never had the opportunity to interview before,” he said. “They were happy where they were at and weren’t looking, and then all of a sudden, they’re finding themselves unemployed. I’m seeing a much higher caliber of candidate come through.”

Related Search Term(s): software development

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