Software Best Practices

[quote user="Jerry Deville"]In the developer space, they had a monitor that tracked the number of transactions each day, and the threshold they needed to reach to generate a profit each day. When they released an update, the developers looked to the monitors to see how their work increased...

Earl and Steve point out the difficulties of making developers directly responsible for profitability. That is true, but that doesn't mean you cannot help them be indirectly responsible for profitability. The key is clearly defining what makes you profitable - this is a difficult challenge. One example...

We have seen many companies struggle with this question. I think most developers will need to work for at least a few years before they're even ready to think about general business issues, much less profitability. They need to spend those first few years learning how to work in a commercial setting...

I agree, I'm often amazed at how customers often appear to assume that they are never on the critical path for the project. I have worked for one company that was very good at presenting, pre-sale, a timeline with all customer/supplier dependencies clearly marked and was generally able (mainly due...

Earl, Here is one more to your accurate list of how developers can contribute towards profitability: 4. They flag dependencies not met by the customer as early as possible and detect subtle changes to features that customer representatives in charge of the software development typically demand. These...

Hello Marco, What an interesting question! Profit, is of course, the difference between cost to produce and price charged. In reality, the developers have little control over profit since they have NO control over price charged. What I guess you are asking is what is the best way to lower cost since...

I work in ERP business and we usually employ one or two developers for each project and two or three consultants. I would like to make my developers and consultants more directly responsible of project profitability . What is the best way to obtain it? We want to be some more profitable than our competitors...