Michael Ouma
16 November 2009
Nairobi — Kenyan software developers must adopt a development methodology that promote quality, thoroughness, predictability, reliability and consistency if they are to be competitive globally.
They must also develop solutions that meet and exceed customers' requirements, are built within cost and are predictable, reliable and delivered on time.
Roland Omoresemi, chief executive of leading US software innovator Tezza Solutions, says there has to be the desire to "perfect" the software development process by pushing for "excellence" and "quality" in the process.
"From the conception of an idea to its implementation, there needs to be a complete devotion to thoroughness and not a 'rush to market' mentality," said Mr Omoresemi. "Requirements must be fully understood and static forms of testing implemented at the onset to ensure defects are caught within 'business requirements documents' prior to actual coding."
Analysts estimate that the country's software industry, which in 2008 contributed $66.7 million to the economy, to be worth about $20 million in 2009, derived from a developer community of about 2,000 people, which has established enterprises with as little as about $667.
"We must know what our customers want before we embark on building anything," said Mr Omoresemi, who is later this month to bring a team to Nairobi for a software quality assurance course. Owing to its existing human resource base, Kenya can utilise this to identify niche areas in software development, he added.
"Kenya as a country can leverage on the abundance of human resources and necessary infrastructure to become a software testing powerhouse in Africa and the world at large," he said and challenged the budding local software industry to develop a culture of excellence by learning from other markets.
"Unlike in some African countries where the government is expected to police the standards used in their software applications, software development companies in Kenya must pursue these virtues on their own," Mr Omoresemi said. "Quality and efficient products will sell any day and customers will come in their millions."
Globally, software testing has become an integral part of the software development process and has been fully branded into a "service" by countries like India.
Several cases illustrate what could happen when quality assurance and excellence are not adhered to in the software development process -- including loss of life and/or financial disasters caused by poor software testing or the lack of it.
Mr Omoresemi cited the launch of Heathrow's Terminal 5 as an example.
Meant to be a proud day for British Airways, it instead turned out to be an absolute PR disaster as the failure of the baggage handling systems disrupted the travel plans of thousands of holiday travellers.
On the opening day, BA had to cancel 34 flights and suspend baggage check-in while over the next 10 days some 28,000 bags failed to travel with their owners and over 500 flights were cancelled.
US regulators banned a health insurance company from selling certain types of policies in January this year due to ongoing computer system problems that resulted in denial of coverage for needed medications and mistaken overcharging or cancellation of benefits.
Problems in a $170 million US government IT project in January 2005 led to its scrapping two months later.
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