WHITE PAPERS SPONSORED PROFILES JOB BOARD WEBINAR CENTER FREE SOFTWARE BZ RESEARCH ALMSHAREPOINT EVENTS CALENDAR PRINT/PDF EDITION PRINT/PDF BACK ISSUES

SUBSCRIBE TODAY CUSTOMER SERVICE EDITORIAL CALENDAR EDITORIAL BEATS GUEST VIEW GUIDE SD TIMES 100 GUIDE EVENTS CALENDAR ADVERTISING ARTICLE REPRINTS REPORT A BUG SITE MAP

ABOUT US BZ MEDIA NEWS BZ RESEARCH NEWS ON MONDAY SPTECHREPORT SPTECHWEB SPTECHCON IPHONE/IPAD DEVCON ANDROID DEVCON PRIVACY POLICY CONTACT US

HOME >> OPINIONS

Guest View: It's Not Too Late to Learn

By James Shore

August 15, 2005 — (Page 1 of 4)
On Feb. 3, 2005, Robert S. Mueller III, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, appeared before a Senate subcommittee to explain how the FBI had managed to waste US$104.5 million.

This couldn’t have been a very comfortable position to be in.

In 2001, the FBI had launched the Trilogy project, a project designed to update the FBI’s IT infrastructure.

Trilogy came in three parts: update the network, update the hardware and update the software. Guess which one Robert Mueller was talking about?

That’s right—the software. “Virtual Case File,” or VCF, was intended to allow FBI agents to upload information to a centralized database so that it could be easily accessed by others.

It was a disaster, and the $170 million project was canceled for a loss of $104.5 million.

Sadly, the loss was entirely avoidable: The FBI made many classic mistakes. In this article, I’ll take a look at three of these mistakes and apply lessons learned from the agile software movement.

Classic Mistake No. 1: Ignoring the Users. User involvement is a critical factor in the success of software projects.

In its 2004 CHAOS report, the Standish Group cites user involvement as the top project success factor, and lack of user input as the top cause of project problems. Despite this, there is no indication that the FBI made the involvement of actual agents a priority in VCF development.

In agile projects, user involvement is a central concern.

Many agile projects have an “on-site customer”—a user representative who is directly responsible for picking priorities and defining features. Agile teams produce working software every month (or even every week) for demonstrations and user review. They recruit outside customers to regularly review these releases and provide feedback.

User involvement isn’t easy. At the March meeting of the Portland Software Development Roundtable, a participant described a government project for the state of Oregon. For several periods of six months, different groups of seven to eight users were physically moved to the capitol in order to work out detailed requirements. Larger user groups did extensive testing and review close to each release.

Pages 1 2 3 4

Share this link: http://sdt.bz/28788

Most Read Latest News Blog Resources

Zeichick’s Take: Radio moves from analog waveforms to digital packets
Streaming radio highlights the need for streaming applications to be designed to take up as little bandwidth as possible

Taking enterprise architecture to the business side
Startup Corso is bringing out a cloud-based planning platform that ties into business plans

Appcelerator Acquires Cocoafish to Add Instant Mobile Cloud Capabilities to its Industry Leading Titanium Platform
Appcelerator Offers Messaging, Social, Location and Storage Mobile Cloud Services to All Mobile App Publishers

ComponentOne Releases a Collection of 40+ UI Widgets Powered by HTML5 and jQuery
ComponentOne has announced the 2012 release of Wijmo: a kit of UI widgets for HTML5 and jQuery development

Taking enterprise architecture to the business side
Startup Corso is bringing out a cloud-based planning platform that ties into business plans

Top five apps to manage your workload
Web applications offer new ways to track your “to-do” lists

Not so fast when it comes to testing in the cloud
Developers face outsourcing, virtual lab management and mobile devices as obstacles

Xceed releases UX-focused suite for Microsoft’s WPF
"Blendables" helps match user experiences to developer visions

Are you at risk for burnout?
Burnout is a severe problem and it can strike at any time. Here's how to tell if you are nearing the edge.

Agility, mom, and apple pie
If we're to evaluate the state-of-the-art in software development, we should start with the values espoused in the Agile Manifesto.

RIM woos developers with free tablet
How do you get more apps ported to the BlackBerry PlayBook? By giving every developer a free tablet, of course!

GitHire: Use Headhunters to Find Your Perfect Programmer
Are you a hiring manager tired of scouring the job boards? Check out this new service that will find 5 people interested in your jobs.

The Hidden Costs of Software Licensing Moving beyond paper-based software licensing to more flexible, software-based licensing is a business decision. There is a growing trend tow...

Case Study: You May Need a Development Mechanic As a contractor for a major financial player in Germany, SOBEGE, a German-based consultancy specializing in embedded IT and web services, wa...

Ensuring Software Quality at a Major International Bank One of the world’s leading international banks has adopted AgitarOne technology for delivering generated unit tests for their Java software...

Load Testing Adobe Flex Applications Adobe Flex applications may be different from applications you’ve worked with before. For classic HTML web applications, the server does all...

Technorati

Digg

Slashdot

Facebook

Friendfeed

Twitter

del.icio.us

Guest View: The Software Industry Is Too Reactive A quick glance at the software news lately should make you wonder why software vendors can’t develop secure software code....

UML: Too Big, Too Small, Just Right? UML 2.0 is too fat. Modeling experts don't necessarily agree with the remark made by one of UML's own backers....

Not a Cease-Fire, Not a Truce Sun wants to expand the penetration of Java within the enterprise, and more tightly couple the well-known Java brand around...

Add comment

Name*
Email*
Country

Comment

Guest View: The Software Industry Is Too Reactive
A quick glance at the software news lately should make you wonder why software vendors can’t develop secure software code Read More...

News on Monday
more>>
SharePoint Tech Report
more>>

Download Current Issue
FEBRUARY 2012 PDF ISSUE

Need Back Issues?
DOWNLOAD HERE

Want to subscribe?

Are you at risk for burnout?
Burnout is a severe problem and it can strike at any time. Here's how to tell if you are nearing the edge.
02/09/2012 02:16 PM EST

Agility, mom, and apple pie
If we're to evaluate the state-of-the-art in software development, we should start with the values espoused in the Agile Manifesto.
02/07/2012 11:57 AM EST

RIM woos developers with free tablet
How do you get more apps ported to the BlackBerry PlayBook? By giving every developer a free tablet, of course!
02/04/2012 01:57 PM EST

GitHire: Use Headhunters to Find Your Perfect Programmer
Are you a hiring manager tired of scouring the job boards? Check out this new service that will find 5 people interested in your jobs.
02/03/2012 12:17 PM EST

Facebook claims hacker cred
Facebook's SEC S-1 filing form includes a short essay on the Hacker Way by Mark Zuckerberg himself.
02/02/2012 08:26 AM EST

Ryan Dahl steps down
Ryan Dahl, creator of Node.js, steps back from his position as gatekeeper for the project.
02/01/2012 04:58 PM EST