BT

Facilitating the Spread of Knowledge and Innovation in Professional Software Development

Write for InfoQ

Topics

Choose your language

InfoQ Homepage News Survey Finds IT Still Not Aligned with Customer and Business Needs

Survey Finds IT Still Not Aligned with Customer and Business Needs

This item in japanese

Lire ce contenu en français

Bookmarks

The results of a survey, run by Tasktop using their licensed Forrester Modern Application Assessment Tool, indicate that despite the ongoing adoption of agile, lean, DevOps and other "modern" approaches to software development, there is still a large gap between IT development priorities and the needs of customers and business people in many organisations. 

The survey covers topics such as customer needs- application development and delivery objectives and strategies, business value, metrics, tools and more.  The survey respondents were all IT professionals across a range of roles: developers, tech leads, project managers, chief technology officers and other titles.

The key findings indicate that, despite the widespread uptake of modern approaches to development, the gulf of understanding between business strategy, customer needs and IT delivery is still firmly entrenched.

  • Only six percent strongly agreed that they could trace the contents of a software release back to business needs or customer satisfaction
  • Just nine percent strongly agreed that their application development and delivery strategies were aligned with business strategies
  • Only 15 percent strongly agreed that their work management tools assist in coordinating the work of the software delivery team satisfaction

Betty Zakheim ‎VP, Industry Strategy at Tasktop Technologies, said of the survey results:

It seems that in spite of a strong industry drive toward being more responsive to the the needs of the business, there are still large gaps in how organizations realize the benefits of the tools they use to support these initiatives.

Any parties interested in taking the survey and receiving an assessment can do so here

Rate this Article

Adoption
Style

Hello stranger!

You need to Register an InfoQ account or or login to post comments. But there's so much more behind being registered.

Get the most out of the InfoQ experience.

Allowed html: a,b,br,blockquote,i,li,pre,u,ul,p

Community comments

  • solving symptoms

    by Mac Noodle,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    The problem is people try to solve symptoms instead of problems. They always seem to cargo cult things. Even those who should know better. We all do it on some level.

    Doing it right starts with hiring the right people and the right mix of people. Look around. How many people do you have that are not developers? How multi-skilled are your developers? Do you have groups that were the same group 10 years ago with just another name (i.e. DevOps group)? Etc. The further your devs are from the customer and deploying the problem, the further you will be from doing the right thing for the customer.

    OF course, as always, the customer seldom knows what they really want or really need. Figuring that out is normally a big challenge.

  • Survey finds Earth still round.

    by Victor Olex,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    No, the problem is that very few developers keep working as developers after 15-20 years of experience. Younger cadre makes the same mistakes as they learn.

  • Re: solving symptoms

    by Shane Hastie,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    You're right Mark, what saddens me is this is not surprising - we do actually know how to overcome these problems and some organisations have got it right. Unfortunately there is a long way to go still for most of our industry.

  • Re: Survey finds Earth still round.

    by Shane Hastie,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    I agree Victor, but other professions also suffer from people moving on and out yet they manage to educate the new cadre in good ways of working. How come this isn't happening in our industry?

Allowed html: a,b,br,blockquote,i,li,pre,u,ul,p

Allowed html: a,b,br,blockquote,i,li,pre,u,ul,p

BT