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a. ( t S. Case Two Using CAST to Track Programmer Productivity As you read in this chapter, computer programs are written by people. As with any type of work, some people are better at programming than others. Employers need a fair, objective CHAPTER 13 - Construction, Integration and Test way to find out who the excellent programmers are so as to recognize their superior work, to figure out what will help the others improve, and to leam what makes the excellent programmers better so the employers can try to duplicate this "secret sauce" throughout their workforce. Superior programming is a composite of several measures. One is productivity: how much code al programmer produces. Another is quality: how error-free that code is. Other measures include the performance and security of the resulting program and its clarity for future modifications by people who were not involved in writing it. Because it is difficult to measure these factors, most managers end up measuring the process by which software is built and the effort put into that process rather than its outcomes. As Jitendra Subramanyam, director of research at CAST, Inc., writes, "It's as if Michael Phelps tracks his time in the gym, the time it takes him to eat his meals, the time he spends on his Xbox, time walking his dog... but bizarrely. not the time it takes him to swim the 100 meter butterfly IBM recognizes the need to focus on people and their output. "At the end of the day, people are in the middle of application development," says Pat Howard, vice president and cloud leader in IBM's global business services division. "It's really important to have great investments, great energy focused around the talent." Howard's department uses the Application Intelligence Platform from French software firm CAST to quantify performance. "Essentially it permitted our people to walk around with a scorecard. They could begin to earn points, based on the results or the value they were driving for the business, Howard says. The program also helps identify performance shortfalls and skill deficiencies. "We use it to identify where more training is needed," Howard says. Training budgets are tight, so "when you spend it, you've got to spend it really smartly, aim it at the right place." Bank of New York Mellon is another CAST user. The bank uses CAST to control the quality of the software produced by offshore contract software developers. Vice president for systems and technology Robert-Michel Lejeune says, "You provide specifications, the offshorer has a process in place, but when they deliver, you don't know the level of quality. Using an automated tool provides you with facts and figures on the go." A system such as this can never be the entire answer to employee or contractor performance evaluation. Systems cannot measure important employee efforts such as contributing ideas in team meetings, mentoring junior employees, and willingly taking on jobs that nobody else wants. However, CAST or something like it will be part of the answer at more and more companies in the future. Discussion Questions 1. As a business manager, would you choose to use CAST to measure programmer productivity? Why or why not? 2. How would you feel as a programmer if your company announced that it was going to start using the CAST Application Intelligence Platform to measure your productivity and that of your colleagues