Software engineering is built on the assumption that developing and using qualit

Question

Software engineering is built on the assumption that developing and using quality processes helps to ensure a quality product. But if a project is not driven by a valid business need, even if quality processes are used, in the end, it does not deliver value to the organization.

Write a short essay (200 to 300 words, 1 to 2 pages MS Word document, not counting the bibliography) about the business drivers of software development, and their relationship to project success and failure. Include a bibliography with at least one resource on this topic, listed in proper APA notation format.
Include the following in your paper:

A description of the major business drivers (motivations) that lead to creating and sustaining a project.

A description of how these drivers would be different for a profit-based organization, compared to a non-profit organization.

Explanation / Answer

This blog posting, the latest in a continuing series on the SEI's work on strategic planning, describes how we are using integrated strategic planning and the associated information framework to derive the most vital business drivers for performance improvement.

An Integrated Strategic Planning Method

The strategic planning method we've been using at the SEI integrates the following two complementary techniques that provide a framework for identifying business drivers for performance improvement:

Critical success factors (CSFs), which are indicators that measure how well an organization is accomplishing its goals. In other words, improvement decisions are informed by best practice models--such as the CMMI, the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), and the Project Management Body of Knowledge--but are driven by business concerns, rather than by an attempt to apply a particular model for its own sake.

Linking Strategic Planning to Performance Improvement

Through the SEI's strategic planning and performance improvement work with federal acquisition program offices, we've observed that key business drivers can and should be elicited from integrated strategic plans. This multi-model combination enables an organization to select the improvement model(s) and practices according to what will best support their business objectives (such as preserving the confidentiality of customer data), rather than according to model-based criteria (such as maturity levels).

Business-Driven Performance Improvement

To showcase the way that integrated strategic planning can help an organization understand its business drivers for improvement, consider an information technology (IT) group with the mission of acquiring IT systems that support the services provided to the broader company's customers. Awareness of a critical uncertainty around the size of the workforce (due to economic conditions, aging, competition for talent, etc.) might help the IT group justify focus on the Baldrige Workforce Focus category for criteria on Workforce Capability and Capacity, as well as the People Capability Maturity Model (P-CMM).

Ideally, the IT group will have fully aligned strategic plans and improvement plans that identify the essential knowledge and best practices contained in the performance improvement models that are most relevant for their specific business drivers.

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