Software development governance: A meta-management perspective
SDG '09 Proceedings of the 2009 ICSE Workshop on Software Development Governance
Software development under bounded rationality and opportunism
SDG '09 Proceedings of the 2009 ICSE Workshop on Software Development Governance
IT project portfolio optimization: a risk management approach to software development governance
IBM Journal of Research and Development
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Software development is both a highly technical and a highly creative activity. Because it is technical, there is a temptation to treat it as something that can be mechanized and deterministically controlled. The creative aspects of software development imply that this urge will lead to failure for all but the most mundane projects. In this talk, I will explore approaches to governing software development that are cognizant of the tension between treating it as a technical activity and treating it as a creative act. The talk begins by presenting a basic overview of the creative nature of software development, including the variability that creativity injects into software development projects. I then present two potential governance responses to this variability: a command and control response, and a "tuning" response. I argue that the tuning response is more suitable for work that is both technical and creative, and I close with some suggestions on what tuning-based governance would look like in organizations of various scales.