Just like there are 5Ps of marketing, there are also “5 Ps” of Software Development in an organisation
1. People :
People include project teams, subject experts, end users, leadership, clients and stakeholders. Good people are required to make a project successful. People issues include having visible executive sponsorship, building an environment of trust, empowering staff, focusing on leadership as well as management, recognizing that the primary gating factor when improving processes is people’s ability to absorb change, and promoting a cross-discipline strategy at both the team and individual levels. A good leader must monitor work and results on a regular basis. He should be willing to listen to all the advice and take right decisions when needed. End users need to be involved at all stages of the project. Without their involvement, the project can be a complete waste of time. Leadership support helps a project get what it needs, financial support, acceptance, and support from others. All of these people are stakeholders and have important roles in the project viz-a-viz organisation.
2. Principles/Philosophies :
Principles and Philosophies of the organisation help to guide people’s decisions when their processes and practices don’t directly address the situation which they find themselves in. At AnAr, our values are very important to us and represent a large part of the service that we offer to our clients. We seek to facilitate good planning and development outcomes by delivering honest advice and to work diligently to achieve our client’s goals. We work with passion to ensure our clients receive a quality and professional experience throughout the duration of a project. Our Core Values teaches us to work in a cohesive environment where there is win-win-win and continuous learning.
3. Practices/Patterns :
. A practice is a self-contained, deployable component of a process. Each patterns & practices offering contains a combination of written documentation and re-usable modes of practice. They are basically used as reference handbook in any organisation .Generally practices are developed over the years of experience and many patterns & practices offerings illustrate how to best fit the situations and get the best outcome considering all possibilities for overall solution benefit. By using patterns & practices offerings, you can accelerate the organizational growth, personal benefit, reduce risk, and position yourself to take future challenges.
4. Products you build (services you sell) :
– This includes the technologies – such as databases, application servers, networks, and client platforms – and tools such as integrated development environments, testing tools, and project planning tools used to create solutions for stakeholders. At the end of the day it is the outcome and feedback that matters most of the time. The products that people built with the help of philosophies led down, the principles and practices of the organisation should have an expected ROI and then the delight factor comes into the picture. The product that you build is the motive and that’s how the 5 P’s are interrelated.
5. Processes :
The previous 4Ps do not exist in a vacuum, there need to be a set of processes acting as some sort of glue to help piece all of this together. Minimally this glue is a lifecycle although more often than not it is a full process or method. At AnAr, we follow the Process Review System laid down by the philosophies of Dr. Deming. These processes help us understand the way we work, collaborate all the facts and thus play a very important role.
I believe, that for successful improvement in the overall process across your entire organisation, you must address these 5Ps. How you address each issue, and to what extent, will vary based on your situation. We can discuss each one in detail in the blogs coming up.
