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TELECOMS AND SOFTWARE NEWS
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Compuware widens software value assessment from development into production
Tony Baer
Compuware widens software value assessment from development into production
The goal of project portfolio management (PPM) is to introduce financial portfolio management disciplines to software development. The problem with most PPM tools is that they stop short of production, not providing a full picture of software value or cost. The latest release of Compuware's Changepoint PPM tool aims to remedy that with new reporting templates and metrics captured from its Vantage application performance management tools. Compuware's move is a good first step towards providing the big picture on software cost and return on investment.Covering software maintenance provides a more realistic barometer of IT software lifecycle costs
As they emerged over the past five years, PPM tools provided a new means for IT organizations to track and report on the health of their software development programs. As logical extensions of project management, they applied financial portfolio management disciplines to software development projects so that IT organizations could monitor the broader health of those projects, and not just whether they were on schedule. However, the drawback with traditional PPM is that tracking whether costs are veering out of control or quality is sinking through the floor didn't provide a full picture on the cost or worth of a software project. The old saying “the surgery was successful but the patient died” could well apply to software projects that in their development phase met all scoping documents, quality tests, budgets, and deadlines, but then faced utilization or performance issues when the software entered production.Compuware has responded with pre-built configurations to Changepoint that tap into application performance data from its Vantage tools and third-party IT service desk systems. With specific reports and key performance indicators (KPIs) available out of the box, the new version of Changepoint can reduce ramp-up time for customers. Some of the KPIs include traditional metrics such as quality indexes that are derived from software testing data, and code health, which can be computed from defect data. But the new reports also include variables covering the performance and availability of the application once it has entered production. This extends the coverage of PPM from development and delivery to actual production.Previously, Changepoint could be manually configured to accept such application performance data; what's new this time is that the new templates covering this data could force the issue. Until now, there has been relatively little overt demand, as most IT organizations have been preoccupied with project delivery. However, as scrutiny over IT budgets increases in the current downturn, they will be under pressure to convince top management about the true lifecycle costs and value of their software. Compuware's move is a useful first step; however, going forward it would make sense to add consumption metrics to reflect if the software, once delivered to production, actually delivers on its promise. While Changepoint does offer metrics for customer satisfaction based on end-user surveys, actual consumption numbers would reveal whether those surveys reflect reality. In the long run, coupling PPM with asset management systems could provide the missing link for tracking IT performance
Ultimately, the cost and value of software is tied to the IT infrastructure on which it runs. As Moore's Law increased price/performance, hardware costs dwindled in importance compared to the cost of acquiring, developing, and integrating software. Now cloud computing is causing history to repeat itself; while hardware commoditization remains reality, the option of sourcing some or all processing externally raises the importance of this variable in computing the lifecycle cost of software. As software requires infrastructure on which to run, the organization's decisions on whether to buy or rent the necessary infrastructure capacity ultimately factor into the lifecycle cost of the software. Such calculations could provide a key input into the organization's decisions on whether to use the cloud.The next logical move for Compuware would be to form partnerships with asset management providers. This could help customers factor in the cloud when determining the total cost of ownership of software.
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