We Can Hear You Glitch Now

This week Verizon became the latest victim of  a software “Glitch”. Verizon's press announcement stated that 15 Million of its customers would be receiving between $2 and $6 in credit due to mistaken past data charges and as a result of faulty software built into their phones. The glitch charged for minor data exchanges according to the company and will cost Verizon a whopping $50 million dollars in customer refunds. While this is certainly welcomed news to its customers, the business impact of this software flaw and in most cases of technology failures is costing Verizon more than a few bucks. 

Of course there is no magic bullet to identify potential glitches or software flaws that could negatively impact a company’s bottom line, but there are some measures that all companies could immediately take into consideration in order to mitigate something like this from happening.

Now, I know nobody will disagree with the first consideration that we all need to realize the importance of quality software development and the impact, both positive and negative, on the consumer. As we've seen recently with Verizon, Virgin, or Chase by locking 16.5 million of their on line customers out of their bank accounts. 

Second: Illustrate the critical value of IT governance as it relates to software development.  While companies can manually review software code before the service or application is deemed “ready for customer use” the chances of missing an existing policy violation or industry best practice can increase due to unrealistic market demands, competitive challenges or company goals.

And Third: Codify and automate your software review processes. By automating your software code reviews you can mitigate the costly risks associated with risk prone manual processes – that simple.

The kind of transparency as demonstrated by Verizon to its customers should also be happening in all IT shops during the development stage of all software projects. Tomorrow I will have the opportunity to speak to the Kronos world wide development team as an invited guest – and you can bet this topic will be front and center during our conversation.  If companies believe that IT governance is important – is it considered a critical element in software development? I'd like to get your thoughts.