Directors with multiple projects
Director with multiple projects
The busy manager of many large-scale projects, each with its own lead and development team, can benefit from the use of Semmle’s On-Demand Analytics of Software Assets (ODASA) solution.
Take Gail as an example. She is overseeing about 30 projects in a large software firm. She needs help in keeping track of quality control throughout the enterprise.
The following examples show how ODASA can help Gail get a handle on all the projects in her remit:
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Problem
With so many projects in her remit, it is hard for Gail to get an accurate overview of the state of each project on a daily basis.
Current solution
Gail meets each project lead regularly to discuss the current state of the project.
Difficulties
- Gail’s perception of progress is biased because of the different personalities of the project leads.
- The meetings are long and time-consuming.
- Some project leads tend to be overly optimistic when reporting progress, which makes it hard to compare results.
New solution
The ODASA dashboard allows Gail to get periodic statistics for each project. This includes the number of completed tasks, corrected bugs, newly reported bugs, maintainability of the code base, test coverage, etc. These results are reported as trends over time on a project-by-project basis. It is also possible to superimpose trends from multiple projects to find projects that stand out from the others.
Benefits
- Objective, timely data enables quick action on emerging problems.
- Prioritize projects that are in trouble and need extra support.
- Complete overview of all relevant data from different sources.
- Dashboard view customized to Gail’s situation.
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Problem
The pace of one project has slowed down. Bug reports are more frequent and fewer bugs are being corrected. It’s clear that something is wrong, but not what.
Current solution
Gail asks the project lead to investigate the problem. The response is that nothing has really changed but that it is harder to maintain the code base due to its increasing size.
Difficulties
Something needs to be done, but it is hard to know where to start and to get an overview of the problem.
New solution
The project lead and Gail use the ODASA dashboard to compute some key architectural metrics and problem areas in the system. It becomes clear that there are too many interdependent modules, which makes it hard to change only a small part of the system. Minor features or bug fixes require substantial changes to the system which slow down the development pace. They decide to request an external code audit from Semmle to propose refactoring opportunities to improve the architecture.
Benefits
- Automatic analysis helps pinpoint problem spots.
- Objective data based on measurements rather than based on biased opinion.
- Complete solution tailored to the demands of Gail and her teams.
