Software house organization
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This document discusses the organization of a software house or software company. It begins by explaining the importance of a software business plan for managing the business. It then describes different types of software companies from large commercial companies to specialized software companies. It outlines common roles in software companies including business analysts, developers, testers, technical writers, and more. The document discusses two common organizational structures - a typical hierarchical structure and a matrix structure. It also covers methodologies, product lifecycles, systems/procedures used, and how software companies measure efficiency.
Software house organization
- 2. INTRODUCTION A software company is a company whose primary products are various forms of software, software technology, distribution, and software product development. • There are several different plans which are needed for managing software business. One of the most important ones is a software business plan.The importance of it bases on the underlying idea that it forms up the foundation of the software business as well as it discusses how important challenges should be solved. In addition it gives needed information for third parties like financing institutions about the future targets of the company. • Firstly, Discusses about the nature of the software business. Secondly, it discusses of the important issues and topics needed in preparing any business plan and thirdly, using the discussion as a basis it formulates a business plan model for the software companies
- 3. Types There are a number of different types of software companies: • Large and well-known companies producing Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS), such as Microsoft, SAP AG, Oracle Corporation, HP, Adobe Systems and Red Hat • Smaller companies that produce custom software for other companies and entrepreneurs, such as RIKSOF • Companies producing specialized Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software, such as Panorama, Hyperion, Siebel Systems, GazitIT, EnigmaTechnologies • Companies producing Software as a Service , such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn • Companies producing software components, such as Developer Express, Dundas, ComponentOne • Application Service Provider such as Salesforce • Companies producing bespoke software for vertical industries or particular geographical regions All of these may be categorized in one or many of the following: Contractual - when the software company is contracted to deliver some particular software from outside (software outsourcing) Product development - when it produces ready to use, packaged software; Commercial off- the-shelf
- 4. Common roles in a software company • Organizing a software company is very specialized type of management skill, where experienced persons can turn the organizational problem into a unique benefit. For example, having sub-teams spread in different time zones may allow a 24-hour company working day, if the teams, systems and procedures are well established. A good example is the test team in time zone 8 hours ahead or behind the development team, who fix software bugs found by the testers. A professional software company normally consists of at least three dedicated sub-teams : • Business analysts who define the business needs of the market • Software developers who create the technical specification and write the software • Software testers who are responsible for the whole process of quality management
- 5. Common roles in a software company In bigger software companies, greater specialization is employed, and quite often there are also: • Technical writers who write all the documentation such as user guides • Release specialists who are responsible for building the whole product and software versioning • User experience designers, who are creating the design architecture based on business requirements, user research and expertise in usability • Graphic designers who are normally responsible for the design of the graphical user interface. • Maintenance engineers who are behind two, three or more lines of support
- 6. Structure The manager of a software company is usually called the Head Of Development (HOD),and reports to the stakeholders. He or she leads the sub-teams directly or via the managers/leaders depending on the size of the organization. Usually teams of up to 10 person are the most operational. In bigger organizations, there are in general two models of the hierarchy: Typical Structure
- 8. Structure • All the teams are fully independent and they work separately on the different projects.The structure is quite simple and all the employees reports to one person, what make the situation quite clear however it is not a good solution in terms of knowledge exchange and optimal usage of human resources. • In this model there are dedicated managers/leaders for each main specialization, "renting" their people for particular projects led by product/project managers, who formally or informally buy the people and pay for their time.This leads to each private employee having two bosses – the product/project manager and the specialized "resource" manager. On one hand it optimizes the usage of human resources, on the other hand it may give rise to conflicts about which one manager has priority in the structure. • There are also a number of variants of these structures, and a number of organizations have this structure spread and split within various departments and units.
- 9. Methodologies Software companies may use a number of various methodologies to produce the code.These can include: • The waterfall model, including project management methodologies like PRINCE2 or PMBoK • Agile software development, such as Extreme Programming and SCRUM • There are also some methodologies which combine both, such as the spiral model, Rational Unified Process (RUP)
- 10. Product Life Cycle Regardless of the methodology used, the product life cycle always consists of at least three stages: • Design – including both the business and technical specification • Coding – the development itself • Testing – the quality management At each stage a different group plays a key role, however each type of role must be involved throughout the whole development process: • Analysts, after completing the business specification, manage the changing business situation to minimize the possibility of change over time.They also support both programmers and testers during the whole development process to ensure that the final product fulfills the business needs specified at the start.The process ideally puts business analysts as the key players during final delivery of the solution to the customer, as they are best placed to provide the best business layer. • Programmers do the technical specification during the design phase, which is why they are called programmers/designers, and during testing time they fix bugs. • Testers complete the test scenarios during the design phase, and evaluate them during the coding phase
- 11. Product Life Cycle The UML sequence diagram of interaction between these groups may look like: The general interaction between the main three groups
- 12. System & Procedure Well-run software companies possess various systems and procedures implemented and working internally across all the sub-teams.These include: Business Analysts • Modeling tools like Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect or IBM Rational Rose Programmers • Version Control Systems and software versioning procedures • Code analysis tools and coding standards, validated manually or automatically • Deployment mechanisms Testers • Bug tracking systems • Test automation tools • Performance and stress test tools Project/Product managers • Enterprise Project Management (EPM) systems and procedures • Product portfolio management (PPM) • Change management systems and procedures • There are also Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), which embed some of these functionalities in one package and are used across the groups.They are delivered from various vendors like Borland, ECM or Compuware.
- 13. Efficiency Audits Well-established software companies typically have some way of measuring their own efficiency.This is usually done by defining the set of key performance indicators, such as • The average number of bugs done by the developer per unit of time or source lines of code • The number of bugs found by tester per test cycle • The average number of test cycles until Zero Bug Bounce (ZBB) • The average time of test cycle • Estimated time of task comparing to the real time of the task (exactitude of planning) • Number of corrections to the baseline
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