Finance staff should care about development methodologies

This might be heretical in some circles; I think that it's neccessary for finance staff that work in software development companies to understand how their company develops software. My rationale is that software development methodologies contain fundamental assumptions about the cost of development. These assumptions not only determine the team's flexability but the overall project cost structure.

The fundamental decision on 'how we do it' is often made by somebody with limited visability to the actual financial plan. This person is a Software Engineer, Architect, or just a development lead who's been given a little direction. A constant, unplanned, change of methodologies means that development environments seldom realize the benefits in cost reduction that they predict.

It is unusual for large, professional development teams to change methodologies on a consistent basis- organizational momentum acts as a counterbalance against an engineer's natural tendency to chase the newest and best. However, in a smaller development environment there is far less organizational momentum and more pressure to 'just get it done'. This pressure comes from a general lack of understanding of the software engineering process.