IT Project Management

How can you evaluate the performance of your IT Development Team?

The question is worth asking and not easy to answer; how can you evaluate the performance of your IT development team with certainty?

Evaluating the performance of an IT Development team is not as easy as it sounds. The fact is that IT projects vary greatly in scope, budget and schedule; in this context, it is difficult to compare!

In this post, we will not discuss “mathematical” methods such as the “function point” (FFP) method that allows you to evaluate the necessary load associated with a development in terms of points.  This evaluation gives constant results, what changes is the number of hours required by the development team to program a function point. Unfortunately these methods are not very common.

We will talk about some of the basics…

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Every IT Project is first and foremost a challenge to evaluate the required capacity and expertise. Indeed, the Manager must constantly re-evaluate the adequacy of his Development team to deliver the next IT Project; both in terms of capacity and expertise.

Information technology tools and technologies play a key role in achieving the growth objectives of companies. More specifically, the automation of certain critical processes can generate a dizzying increase in productivity or a significant improvement in the quality of products and/or customer service.

Consequently, any decision in terms of IT development will have a major impact on the company’s competitiveness and profitability.

In this context, more than one IT Director will spontaneously turn to commercial software to meet the software development demand required to support the company’s growth objectives.

So, in many ways, it seems to us that this is an easy solution for the IT Director and we understand these reasons well:

• The IT Director believes he can quickly fill a capacity gap with a tool that automates certain processes
• The IT Director relies on a known and recognized solution to minimize the risk associated with a Development Project
• The IT Director hopes that the implementation of the commercial solution will be done in a shorter time frame
• The IT Director hopes to minimize his risk by using a solution already developed

While this all sounds very logical, we argue that there is another option that is just as viable and perhaps more profitable; that of the external software development firm.

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