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Demonstrated: distributed database conveyor emulation

Engineering Process Issues

Perspective is often lost on larger projects. Mark Twain said that he lost the river when he learned to navigate it.

Apathy

Apathy is the first and greatest concern for a project and the most dangerous to it and the company.

Requirements Research

Understanding a requirement and its total impact is the first to be lost on growing projects. A small project, the project champion is quick to recognize impact and directs to keep the overall project fully in perspective.

Real Requirements verses Derived Requirements

The traceability to derived requirements can be neither clear nor cheap. Many processes dictates steps and often does not enforce valuable policies. Projects end up duplicating efforts and low priority tasks proceeding high priority or high risk tasks. Known risks show up late in the project when it can be very expensive to correct.

No one is listening

Many major failures of some larger projects where predicted by the troops. Companies often encourage people into management just to prevent bad decisions, when an effect feedback system is all that is needed. This does not help in getting it right the first time.

More documentation does not help if no one can find what we need. Sincere effort into documentation is often lost when there isn't a good document organization.

Where is the team?

Predications of doom by just a few respected individuals causes many to take on defensive rolls. Pro-active team members are the first against the wall when the predictions are realized. Performance reviews that have little relation with performance has a huge demoralizing effects on all. Lost faith in justice is the worst thing that can happen to any organization.

No motivation for support

Where is the motivation on large projects and is it targeted for for the projects success?

Champion

The project champions make the small projects successful and keep a team a team. Companies need to get keep the champions in power and with the tools they need to scale up and stay on top.