"Most managers are willing to concede the idea that they've got more people worries than technical worries. But they seldom manage that way."

--Tom DeMarco
and Timothy Lister

Treat People as the Most Important Resource

Software development is invariably a human process. It involves creative individuals applying their knowledge, experience, and thought to invention of a solution to a problem. It is impossible to develop a system without people to do the work.

Unfortunately, qualified staff is hard to find. There are a number of reasons for this fact. However, the end result is that demand consistently is outstripping supply. In fact, a survey conducted by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) found more than 346,000 vacant information technology positions in U.S. companies at one point in 1998.

Even when qualified staff members are identified and brought onto a project, they still represent a major investment for the organization. It typically takes 6-12 months for a person to become fully functional in an organization. During this learning period, not only is the trainee less effective, but the team members assigned to indoctrinate the new person also are less productive. Added to this lost time is the cost of any formal training needed by the trainee. This not only is it a challenge to find new staff members, it is expensive to integrate them into the organization.

Given the shortage of qualified staff and the cost of integrating a new member, retaining current staff (those with domain knowledge and similar experience in previous successful projects) should be a primary goal. Management should be held accountable for reaching this goal.

In addition, when manning a team, recognize that it will be difficult to locate and integrate personnel, avoid schedules that demand large surges in manpower.

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