IMHO VI: Auditing the development process

A major company working in the field of media and Internet advertising came to us; the foundation of their business is an Internet advertising campaign management system. When they approached us, the system being used was outdated and didn’t provide the necessary support for the company’s business-processes. The development of a new system had been brought to a standstill: the system’s launch date was missed several times. Because of this, the development department received a large number of complaints from the company’s business departments—not only about the development of the new functional, but also regarding support for the company’s current processes.

A task was set in front of us: find out why the work of the development department was unsatisfactory and give recommendations on how to fix the situation.

When performing the audit, we:

•  interviewed all key participants in the development process (from the clients to the developers);
•  studied the software used in software development;
•  studied the program architecture of the created product;
•  audited the infrastructure used in the company.

As a result of the audit,

•  recommendations for changing the company’s organizational structure (development department) were given;
•  shortcomings in development processes were exposed, and a more appropriate work scheme was introduced;
•  more convenient software to support the development process was recommended;
•  deficits and limitations in the infrastructure being used were exposed;
•  a presentation visualizing the results of our work was prepared.

As a result, the client was quite content with the conducted study. The business department, management, and developers were able to find a common language and release a new version of the system in an appropriate period of time.