If you’re still developing under the waterfall model, you know its drawbacks all too well. Feature creep, missed deadlines, revision after revision. And when you finally do release, you run the risk that it isn’t what your customer (or boss) wanted.
For many industries and endeavors, some level of attention to quality is an absolutely necessity – and has been for many years. Regulated industries (like life sciences or aviation), manufacturing, medical and health services, finance, food and beverages,… All of these industries are required by some external body to demonstrate attention to quality.
Releasing unreliable software simply isn’t an option. Customer support calls and costs go up. Developers are distracted by support issues. Sales are more difficult because of a damaged reputation.
CM tools have been around for a long time. And they have continued to improve – at least in some ways. So it’s pretty easy these days to find a CM toolset that provides basic version control, defect tracking, and some level of build management.
Your staff tries to keep up with changing business conditions, changes in tools, and even changes in the team itself. However, over time, it’s extremely difficult to stay on top of the changes. Even small errors or omissions can degrade the productivity & efficiency of your team. Eventually, you feel like you’re pushing a rope.
Do you rely on outside vendors for technology that enables your service? If so, then you already know that there is more to cost than price. Add in surprise support, infrastructure, and training costs, and your business plan can be mortally wounded. But you’ll probably realize this in time to stop the bleeding, right?
The success of your business is dependent on the effective management of your mission-critical data and documentation. Unless your data is unique, safe, available, reliable, current, accessible, and usable by everyone who needs it, your business is battling a strong and unnecessary headwind.`