Appendix II

Sample Best Practices

For each of the areas where our evaluations show opportunities for improvement, Inventivity supplies some "Best Practice" options for addressing the problem. These have been gathered from our years of experience as programmers and managers, and from our extensive reading and networking with peers. A small sample of the types of suggestions we provide are below.

Daily Smoke Test — your teams should be able to complete a build of a project in progress each day; they should do so as a matter of course.

Improved estimation, with closed-loop reviews of estimates — estimating is a skill that gets better with practice and is one of the fastest ways to reduce development risk. Introducing rigorous estimating is never easy, but the payoffs are rapid and measurable.

Code Inspections — doing these, in a lightweight manner, is the least expensive way to find and fix bugs. Training an organization to do these effectively is the hard part.

Measurement — We believe you can’t fix what you can’t measure. Measuring teams against objectives is not a threat or a burden, it’s a way to constantly make sure you are focused on the right things. Measuring appropriate outputs in a way that minimizes disruption to the team is the important part.