Delivery Pains

Handoff of any kind within the software industry, and probably within every industry, is possibly one of the most important aspects that you have to take care of. It’s really about perception. I’ve never believed in throwing things over the wall and hoping for the best. If I do have the control, I will take extreme care when I write a bug report to developers and the testing team, or handing of a software drop to a client. There are just so many things that can go wrong. I’ve had the privilege of working on a lot of version 1 type software where a small little setting here or a specific hardware configuration there might be the perception changer of what works and what doesn’t work. I’ll have to say that letting the testing team or the client bang their heads over and over again trying to get your software to work properly is possibly the most frustrating thing imaginable. You then have to remotely debug their setup which takes days due to the process of pushing logs and instruction between the two, wasting your time and the client/tester.

If you’ve performed a fix for a QA bug report put as much information as you can into the unit testing that you’ve done, be available for them to bounce questions off of you. When you have a software drop be there for the client, maybe even drive or fly down to their offices and work remotely for a day or two so that the software transition is smooth. This really could be the deciding factor in the perception of the software working or not working. Truthfully, how much does it really cost for a short flight, a night stay and some senior developer time. It really adds value for you as a provider to the client that you care about delivery, you want to build a solid foundation with them with face time, and ultimately you make their lives easier just being around.

So the next time think about delivery, are you doing all that is necessary for a smooth transition of information passing? Is it very stressful during code drops? Do you have to put out fires right before and after every release?

Maybe it doesn’t have to be that way…

Maybe it’s your delivery…