What a CEO should know about IT, what questions to ask, or what a CTO needs to communicate to top management.

1. What Top Management
Needs to Know About IT
Stephan Schmidt, Vice CTO, brands4friends

2. Me
Stephan Schmidt
Vice CTO brands4friends
@codemonkeyism
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

3. Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

4. What Top Management
Needs to Know About IT
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

5. Dragons
Management
Black Magic
Top
IT
AP
G Voodoo
?
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

6. That’s wrong!
Can’t manage
Hidden risks
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

7. What should you ask?
What should a CEO ask his CTO?
(VP Engineering, Lead developer, …)
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

8. Stuff that risks your
business or has huge
revenue impact.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

9. Green Shifting.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

10. Questions
to ask?
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

11. What is our largest risk?
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

12. How many SPOFs do you have?
(People and technology)
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

13. When was your last Backup? Where is it?
When has it been tested the last time?
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

14. When will we hit the wall?
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

15. KPI/ SLA
• Availability
• Bugs in Release
• Bugs found before
• Time to Market
• Do we hit (when?) the wall?
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

16. War on Talent
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

17. Do not hire IT personal
if you don’t know what you do.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

18. When your recruiting pipeline is empty
3 months recruiting
+ 3 months notice period
+ 1 current month
= 7 months from need to filled
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

19. Very good developers are 20% more
expensive, but 2000% more productive.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

20. 30-50% of programmers with
programming experience can not program.
Cargo Cultists.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

21. Do not let anyone here developers
without a coding test.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

22. Development is a solved problem
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

23. Waterfall
Resources
($$$)
Time Scope
Kanban (Lean) Agile (Scrum)
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

24. Time to market => more money
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

25. Time to Market
Largest lever NOT in development.
Largest lever in decision phase.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

26. Development Start
Idea
Front-up Development
Problems are here
Everyone focuses
here

27. 1 women needs 9 months to deliver a baby.
9 women do deliver a baby in 1 month.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

28. 1. Feature
2. Feature
1. Feature
2. Feature
3. Feature
4. Feature
5. Feature
3. Feature
4. Feature
5. Feature
Time Time
Parallel Serial
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

29. Market
Opportunity
Feeling of
urgency
Time relative to competitor
Reinertsen 1998
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

30. Top Management Attention of top
possible impact management for a
project
Reinertsen 1998
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

31. Productivity
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

32. The most important factor in software work is
the quality of the programmers.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

33. The best programmers are up to 28 times
better than the worst programmers.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

34. Developers need 15 minutes
to reach the ZONE.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

35. Site note:
No telephones.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

36. Tools.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

37. No silver bullet.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

38. Performance
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

39. Scope
Time
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

40. Scope
Time
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

41. Scope
∞
Time
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

42. Technical Debt
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

43. Technical
Debt
Time
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

44. Technical
Debt
WALL
Rewrite
Time
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

45. Work left
Technical
to do
Debt
Pressure
Time
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

46. Lines of
Code
BAD
Ok
GOOD
Time
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

47. How long does it take?
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

48. Software estimation is usually done by the
wrong people.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

49. Cone of Uncertainty
4x
1x Time
Software Complete
Detailed Design
Complete
UI Complete
Requirements
Complete
0,25x
Initial Idea
Steve McConnell
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

50. Bad Cone of Uncertainty
4x
1x Time
Requirements
Complete
0,25x
Initial Idea
Steve McConnell
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

51. 10% 50% 90%
Probability
Estimation
/Time
1. July 1. August 1. October
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

52. Probability
of Completion
100%
Time or Effort
Point in Time
X
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

53. Brooks Law:
Adding people to a late project makes it later.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

54. DON’T FORGET!
Maintenance typically consumes
40 to 80 percent of software costs.
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

55. Thanks!
Questions?
@codemonkeyism
stephan.schmidt@brands4friends.de
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT

56. Sources
“Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art”,
Steve McConnell
“Developing Products in Half the Time”,
Donald G. Reinertsen
“The Mythical Man-Month”,
Frederick P. Brooks
“Peopleware”,
Tom DeMarco
Stephan Schmidt - What Top Management needs to know about IT