By I. S. W.This response is in reference to Six Sigma Meets Software Development, written by Maneesh Aggarwal and published on 3 June 2002.
1) "...possibly that engineering and manufacturing have evolved over hundreds of years, software development is only a few decades old..." Software development and technology undergoes a fundamental shift in order of magnitude every 3 years or so. {See Moore's law: processing power will double every 18 months has been treated as an axiom.} As a result the core technology to make a gas turbine has essentially not changed in 50 years.
The software skills and technology to perform DOS data base programming 7 years ago are all but dead. Everyone in the business knows there are years, and there are "computer-years". "Internet-years" being a more extreme example.
2) "...Practitioners in the software development arena are not always comfortable or adept with rigorous quantitative analysis...." Those practitioners who fit this category in the software development arena have generally been weeded out long ago. Students today coming out of high school and better colleges and universities have been inculcated in modern software development methodologies: When to use them, the pros/cons of each and how to apply them. I don't know any IT software development managers today who are "...not always comfortable or adept with rigorous quantitative analysis..." and still have their jobs.
3) "...Most often conventional Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) methodologies introduce the quality processes towards the end of the project cycle, just before implementation..." I disagree. The "waterfall" model of software development has been discredited years ago. Take your pick: ATLM, CMM, TMM, RUP, XP, etc. These methodologies are independent of languages. For example: most military software for the USAF is done in the very old Ada language. Here CMM and CMMI are rigorously enforced despite the age of the language. Full iterative software methodologies are used in mission critical systems (x-ray machines, life support, military, nuclear power, etc) as most well developed commercial COTS and home grown packages. I have yet to work at a shop since 1990 that has not enforced both iterative as well as incremental quality assurance via metrics either formally or informally. Every IT manager today involved in any sort of IT roll out, not just software development, knows that to introduce "quality" just before release guarantees failure... no one does it this way any longer as far as I know. Just check the literature (just pick up ANY software development journal), design of the tools and the UGs (User Groups). None of my peers report doing things this way any longer.
4) "...Some of the better methodologies emphasize design reviews and code reviews, but these too come in after the fact in that there is already a deliverable..." I disagree. Please look at Kent Beck's extensive resources on XP or Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute (SEI) CMM and CMMI. There are a host of other standard practice software development methodologies as mentioned above in point #3. Every one of them stress incremental and iterative code reviews, peer reviews and walk throughs.
5) Six Sigma is a tool ideally designed for and tuned to repetitive processes (manufacturing of gas turbines or bolts, same principles). The process of software development is fundamentally different in that after each change the product generally has to be assumed to a "new" animal. There are many elements of Six Sigma that are part of all software best practices. To imply conventional software development is flawed with out Six Sigma is in my opinion incorrect. The resources mentioned in point #4 above should shed some light on this topic.
About The Author
I. S. W. has managed software development projects for 15 years, the last 7 of which have focused on Intranet based software quality and performance. He has been a Vice President and Director of MIS along the way at Fortune 100 firms. He is Six Sigma certified by a Fortune 100 firm.
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