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The IT service BSI has provided some advice for the implementation of software projects by using the Scrum methodology.

The IT service provider BSI Business Systems Integration has implemented many customers solutions based on the Scrum Agile methodology in recent years. According to BSI, there was a great costumer feedback. However, the BSI team knows that agile methods are not suitable for all kinds of companies or projects. Therefore the company has summed up the most important points that should be considered when choosing this approach. To avoid unpleasant surprises with Scrum projects and agile projects and the project is additionally realized in cooperation with a service provider; companies should consider the following five points:

• Agile requires a very direct communication and a good working atmosphere. The teamwork has to be particularly close and prompt – ideally, the customer is firmly integrated into the development team. Agreements are decided ad-hoc, via e-mail, chat, or face to face. This of course requires a time budget from the customers.

• Culture and language play a big role in how people communicate. What languages do the project workers speak best? Is it important to read between the lines? There are frequent misunderstandings and difficulties of interpretation. For example, in Switzerland they often use word “Pendenz” for open tasks, in Germany this term is not known.

• Agile methods and hierarchies are contradictory: the communication with Scrum and Co. takes place far away from hierarchical levels and traditional executions of decisions.

• Software development is a service and not an industrial production that you can outsource without complications. This point becomes even more important the more complex and specialized the requirements of the software are.

• Therefore, agile projects rarely work in the offshore model.

A fixed price for the project implementation and the Scrum methodology has, according to BSI, not to be oppositions in every case. “Companies should not be blinded by popular names like Agile, Offshoring or supposedly low prices,” says the Chairman of the Administrative Board, Jens Thuesen. His company counts on a fixed price model that works well. Under certain conditions with Scrum, the customer and the service provider were satisfied.

Did these tips help you in your current work?

Source: http://www.swissitmagazine.ch/software/entwicklungprogrammiersprachen/articles/290368/

Last Saturday, the first website ever celebrated its birthday and turned 20. Congratulations!

On 13 November 1990, the physicist Tim Berners-Lee from the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN in Switzerland released the website info.cern.ch.

Take a look at the original page!

How was the aim of this project defined? “The WorldWideWeb (W3) is a wide-areahypermedia information retrieval initiative aiming to give universal access to a large universe of documents.”

According to worldwidewebsize, the web contains at least 2.95 billion pages by now – speaking about a large universe of documents! That is an impressive growth rate, right?

A study of PAC (Pierre Audoin Consultants)

More and more German companies rely on the Business Efficiency of IT technologies. The main factors here are Product Data Management (PDM), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Business Intelligence (BI) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

According to PAC, the use of IT experts could be crucial for the recovery or non-recovery of a company. Particularly affected by the economic crisis, the industry is now looking for new IT solutions. Support to reduce costs is now required more than ever. On one hand, the expenditure for IT employees is declining and on the other hand the business efficiency should be improved by IT tools.
Direct costs should be cut down by consolidating and standardizing the IT environment. In addition, the companies intend to rely more on outsourcing in the future. In order to further reduce costs, new contracts such as “pay-per-use” in which flexible pricing models are established should be made.

The PAC says that optimizing the business efficiency is particularly important at the product development stage. PLM and PDM are the appropriate fields. Using the Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), the manufacturing process should be designed more economical.
However, not only during the development process but also at sales and after-sales IT solutions are important. It is gaining in importance in the areas of CRM, BI and service management. From these findings, one is able to make better decisions in operational and strategic planning.

The investment priorities are different in every industry

In the automotive industry, for example, CRM, After-Sales, BI, PLM and collaboration are needed the most. In the aerospace and defense industry however it is more important to have an efficient product development and already adopted solutions should be harmonized. Building tools in the repair and maintenance area and the integration of applications with ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) are common tasks of the IT employees.
Overall CRM, PLM and supply chain management (SCM) become increasingly important.

A detailed overview of the individual industries can be found directly in the study of PAC: Manufacturing Industry Germany 2010

Source: http://www.cio.de/strategien/analysen/2239448/

The crisis in the IT market is overcome.
Furthermore German IT freelancers seem to be very satisfied with their order situation. The importance of the IT market in Germany is increasing further.
This is also fitting to the current market figures I would like to present you in below.

German IT service providers expect a market growth of up to 5% by the end of 2010.
A growth even stronger is expected for the following years. The further distant the future, the better are the prospects for the German IT market.

Market Research Company and consultancy Lünendonk surveyed an explorative group of German suppliers and received mostly positive responses concerning the IT market development:
For the rest of 2010 eight out of ten respondents anticipate a maximum market growth of five percent, whereas not one of the respondents expects losses for the remaining year.

The expectations from 2010 to 2015 are even better.
Good two-thirds (64%) of the respondents expect an increase of 1-5%. The remaining 34% expect an even higher growth, so the average agrees on 5.7%.

Lünendonk indicates the current market volume of € 17.3 billion. In comparison to 2008, it is a growth of 2%. (These figures are based on information provided by the industry association Bitkom and the European Information Technology Observatory (EITO).

What are your impressions – Have we left the crisis behind?
We are looking forward to your opinions.

Source: cio.de

A project plan should always be based on good risk management. Therefore you should regularly check whether the issue is possible to achieve. Suggestions for a change coming from outside the team might become risks, so to avoid unpleasant surprises, changes should always be made formally. Before implementing new ideas calculations of time- and money-cost should be made.
Furthermore, in the beginning of a project all objectives must be clearly defined:

- What is necessary to achieve the goal?
Good and regular documentation is very important. This avoids confusion and dubiety in the team. Daily team meetings can be very helpful here.
- Where are we on our way to the goal?
Good communication and organization are extremely important in team work. Therefore, it is important to accurately define the roles in a team. It might be best to document the responsibilities in written form. The work flow should always be transparent.

The leading project manager should be well trained, able to assert himself and be able to make out-of-favour decisions.

In the end of a project someone should write a final report on the project development, major problems, found solutions and achieved results. Afterwards a project reflection could be helpful to know what was solved well and what parts could be optimized for further projects.

Maybe you have some more tips for the other readers? We’d love to know your opinion.

based on : http://www.cio.de/strategien/2238887/
http://www.log-in-verlag.de/service/2006/138/SCHEMEL-Service.pdf

Just recently projektwerk invited some IT experts for an interview, starting with Stephen Gullans, CEO of EMTEC IT-Solutions GmbH.

What was the most interesting project you have implemented?
The most interesting project in terms of location was a project implemented in Hawaii.
The most interesting project in terms of people was working with a demanding customer in Ireland. Although a number of other software vendors dreaded working with the project manager, we got along very well and the implementation of the software project fulfilled all expectations.

What was the most difficult experience you have had with a customer?
Probably one of the most difficult experiences was implementing a software project at a customer site where the customer had thrown out another system due to unfulfilled requirements. The software partner I was working with had just switched the data management from a simple database to a full-fledged database management system. There were some persistent problems during commissioning and the customer was exerting much pressure to get everything up and run the project to satisfaction. After an intense period of fault finding and software modification everything was solved to the full satisfaction of the customer.

What was the biggest challenge you had to face?
About a year after becoming self-employed business was bad due to 9/11. At the same time my main partner was trying to destroy my business in order to take it over. In the end I was able to find a new and better partner.

Are there customers you would refuse to work with?
So far I’ve been fortunate not to have worked with customers, who I would refuse to work with in the future. However if a customer is not willing to listen to good advice and insist on having things done in a way which I could not answer for, I would recommend the customer to work with somebody else. Also I believe in fair-play and if someone does not play according to such rules there is no pleasure in working with such people.

After slightly descending project postings on projektwerk.de in May, the overall positive trend continues. In particular, the number of SAP projects hit a record high in June: figures mount up to 296 projects in 2010 compared to 110 projects in June 2009.

This growth is due to an unexpectedly strong business year for SAP – as the German software developer was able to increase it’s turnover considerably in the first quarter of 2010. This significant upward development can be attributed to the after-effects of the economic crisis, which drives many companies to restructure operations. This, in turn, leads to heavy investments in the IT sector.

However, not only SAP projects on projektwerk.de show an upward trend.

According to BITKOM, the German Association for Information Technology, the expectations concerning the tendency of the ICT sector’s financial situation rose by 71 percent in the second quarter of 2010.

“The BITKOM-industry is expecting further growth”, says BITKOM chairman Scheer. This is partly due to the necessity of upgrading such infrastructures as electricity supply, government agency networks, and the educational system. Nevertheless, such improvements are only manageable with sufficient specialists available to get the work done. As part of this development, the demand for IT-professionals and freelancers will increase significantly. According to BITKOM there are about 20,000 vacant positions in the ICT sector – every third company listed in the BITKOM Index is complaining about a lack of experts, negatively affecting their performance and business development.

Managing Director of projektwerk GmbH, Dr. Christiane Strasse, sees significant advantages for IT freelancers: “Based on our figures, we can say with certainty that the recovery of the IT market will further continue as more investments will be made. Another important factor is the lack of experts. However, this deficiency can be optimally offset by utilizing freelancers.”

I just arrived in Berlin at the next10 and already got so inspired regarding projektwerk’s business:

I met an entrepreneur who is producing cars five times quicker than the automotive industry by applying the principles of coproduction and crowdsourcing:  John Rogers from  Local Motors.

From Louis Rossetto, who co-founded wired magazine, I learned that chocolate is healthy

Ola Ahlvarsson, a swedisch Entrepreneur who is serially internationalizing his startups, advised me to put a lot of management attention on the internationalization of projektwerk. I also learned a lot about the markets we are heading to…

What a beginning… and it’s only lunch time.

I’m really looking forward to the next hours. I’ll keep you updatet!