Product Development Smells

Chandan patary

What is Smell?

Smell is an indicator of something that has gone wrong.

Smells are indicators that business value is not being delivered where it should be.

Smells does not assure a problem; it is a signal worth investigating.

Every smell is a symptom of one more business value that can be improved.

Product Smells

It is a pain that a customer experiences when the software does not meet the need.

“Quality Delivered to Customer Is in pathetic state” End users are complaining about the product in

terms of quality, usages etc. Several issues are coming up as an when

customers are using the product.

Product Smells

Releasing product to the Customer Takes Too Long: Not able to release the product as fast as market

needs Competitor has already launched the similar

product Not able to extend the features with the existing

product line. Competent resource are not available to improve

the execution speed.

Product Smells

“Features are not useful”Organization build product with

customer need which are not required for all type of customer or geographies.

Customer does not know what they need and product build on assumption

Marketing team promise to build some thing which no body knows

Product Smells

“Usability of the product is bad”Software solution is not helping to

improve the productivity of the end users

Product is not meeting the customer exact need

End users are frustrated and delayed the payment

Customer expectation is too high and changing the expectation and are too demanding.

Interface to the end customer vs implementer is not efficient and less frequent.

Product Smells

“Expensive to build the product and extensibility , maintainability is hard”Fixing the issues are too expensiveExtensibility for the features is

expensive “Experts domain people are missing to understand end users need”Customer complains not understand

themDevelopers blame back end users

Process Smells

Process smells are symptoms of internal software execution problems.

Process smell reflect into the product which used by the end users.

Process Smells

“Missing effective connection with the end users”There is no process to connect with the

usersThere is no efficient persons who

understand the need, collect the need effectively, communicate the same need to the implementer.

Efficient process is missing to address the same need.

End users, product managers, sales and marketing team members are all busy and no time to interact and explaing

Process Smells

“Upper management interaction,collaboration,visilibity with the project progress is less”Transparent data is not available

regarding product developmentRegional politics is too high

(Transparency is missing)

Process Smells

“Resource capability”Highly skilled resource are located in one

location fully overloadedParallel expertise build require lot of

time and not allowed in certain situationOutsourced are not allowed in certain

area and certain scenariosSkilled resources are in shortage

Process Smells

Too many bugs to fix Team members are not wiling to do

bug fix Product technology is outdated and

no fund to upgrade Extensibility is hard with legacy

solution. Expertise is dead with proven establish legacy product.

No product roadmap

People Smells

Too many layers in the organization. High in redundant positions.

Ownership , trust , maturity missing with the team members

Competent , capable team member are missing Shortage of real talent and sharing ,caring

parameters are missing with the organization Highly political and bureaucratic environment Real leaders and leadership practice are

missing Attrition is too high , legacy people are too

many

Code Smells

Taiichi Ohno considered overproduction the worst of all manufacturing wastes— it hides the other wastes.

In software development, duplication is the worst of all the code smells. Duplication is the number one trigger for

refactoring. Refactoring significantly improve code smell

Code Smells

As Toyota teaches “eyes for waste,” so team

develop “eyes for duplication.”similar valuessimilar variable namessimilar code structuresloops of the same lengthduplication between test and production

codesimilar error handling clauses

Test Smells

Gerard Meszaros defined a set of project test smells: buggy tests—defects are found that should be detected

by automated tests. They were not found due to mistakes in the tests.

developers not writing tests—no automated tests are added while the developers are implementing functionality.

high test maintenance—a lot of time is spent maintaining the

tests. And, when new functionality is implemented, most of the effort goes to updating the automated tests.

production bugs—many defects slip through the testing.

What are the Smells ?

Find as many smells as you can with your organization.

Convert those into business value and prioritized those and find actions to address those.