Boston Edison improves software development - Boston Edison Co. uses LBMS Inc.'s Process Engineer process management software - Cover Story

Software Magazine, Dec, 1993 by Michael W. Bucken

Utility boosts quality with process management package

Through the effort to improve quality in corporate America has taken many paths in recent years, it has been slow to reach the software development world.

However, as corporate MIS officials are pushed to justify the benefits of their organizations, they are searching for ways to quantify their work.

Several corporations are turning to a new generation of methodologies or development processes that can automate the tedious paper-based methods of the 1980s, while offering better tools to establish the financial benefits of MIS.

One of these corporations is Boston Edison Co., a $1.5 billion, Boston-based utility. In an effort to improve its software development process, Boston Edison commissioned help from Andersen Consulting Inc., located in Chicago.

During 1990, Andersen Consulting made recommendations regarding hardware and software purchases, personnel moves and organizational structure. Above all, the consultant urged the utility to install a process management system for the 120 software developers in the IS organization, and for the end users creating specific packages for their organizations.

"The concept was to get the users and managers involved in the process," said Francis Giroux, manager of the Applications Division of Boston Edison's Information Technology organization. Therefore, the "migration and integration of the system into the process had to be user-driven.

"The study [aimed] to identify ways to build up our application protfolio," Giroux continued. "We wanted to find out what was necessary to build a quality product."

GETTING BETTER NUMBERS

Today, Boston Edison has nearly completed the implementation of the Process Engineer package from Houston-based LBMS Inc., the U.S. operation of Lear-month & Burchett Management Systems Inc, headquartered in London. Described by LBMS as an interactive process management environment, the Process Engineer product operates on MS-DOS-based systems running the Windows 3.x software from Microsoft Corp., Redmond, Wash.

Two years after beginning a gradual implementation of Process Engineer, Boston Edison contends that the quality of the development process and the applications themselves have improved. "We're still defining the quality [metrics]," said Giroux. "But the numbers are clearly better."

Boston Edison's ninth and final application development team will complete a project using the LBMS process by the end of 1993, officials said.

"Our goal was to have all of our application development teams use the process within two years [of its first installation at Boston Edison in 1991]," said Sharon Kloss, manager of application support in the Applications Division at Boston Edison. "That goal will be achieved."

According to company officials, the main reasons the utility chose Process Engineer were the software's ability to incorporate features from multiple methodologies and its ability to be customized by the utility's engineers. In addition, Boston Edison linked the system's project estimator function for estimating the length of projects.

"The estimator has given us good credibility," Kloss said. "Some groups have wanted too much in a short period of time in the past," she said. "Now we can show them how many steps it will take to complete a job. We can let [users] know what's involved in a project and how long it will take."

Kloss contended that the estimator tool offered capabilities beyond those included in the myriad project management tools in the market.

Ten years ago, Boston Edison moved to improve its software development process by implementing the Stradis methodology, still marketed by McDonell Douglas Information Systems Inc., located in Irvine, Calif.

While the early work with Stradis was helpful to the organization, Boston Edison developers outgrew the methodology during the late 1980s, according to Giroux. For one thing, he said, the paperwork required to utilize the methodology overwhelmed the developers. "Our experiences with Stradis were not always good experiences," Giroux said, noting that "it took for too long to do the documentation."

Boston Edison then installed the development toolsets of Bachman Information Systems Inc., Burlington, Mass., and began implementing them without the aid of a formal development process. Giroux noted that Boston Edison's experience with the Buchman tools has been solid, and the firm has no plans to abandon them as partof implementing the Anderson recommendations.

HAVING A METHOD AND USING IT TOO

The exhaustive effort to select a process included several discussions with MIS officials at similar-sized firms, said Kloss, who oversaw the selection, training and implementation of the LBMS process. Many of the stories related to her by these MIS officials were not positive ones, she added.

At many of these firms, she said, "There was a discrepancy between companies having a method and using a method. A lot of people had processes but didn't use them." Kloss said the reasons companies cited for abandoning methods included a lack of flexibility, a lack of range and a lack of customization capabilities.