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Create a Horizontally Optimized SDLC to Better Meet Business Demands
Local optimization isn’t the answer – you must examine the entire SDLC.
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Contributors
- Avraham Mordoch, CEO, TOC Solutions
- Emir Hasanbegovic, Founder & CTO, TribalScale
- Paul Dowman, Founder, OK GROW!
- Michael Hofweller, Director of Growth, OK GROW!
- Kofi Senaya, Director of Product, Clearbridge Mobile
- Amit Jethani, Product Manager, Pivotal Labs
- John Munro, President, Scrum Masters Inc.
- Ben Palacio, Information Systems Analyst, County of Nevada
- Michael Yokota, Founder, Made with Magnolia
- Sterling Bjorndahl, Director of Operations, eHealth Saskatchewan
- Ken Piddington, Chief Information Officer and Executive Advisor, MRE Consulting
- Emilio Chemali, Director of Strategic Business Intelligence & DevOps, MRE Consulting
Your Challenge
- While teams are used to optimizing their own respective areas of responsibility, there is lack of clarity on the overall core SDLC process resulting in applications being released that are of poor quality.
- Software development teams are struggling to release on time and within budget.
- Teams do not understand the overall process, are not communicating well, and traceability is hard to achieve.
- Each team claims to be optimized yet the final deliverable doesn’t reflect the expected quality.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Optimizing can make you worse. One cannot just optimize locally – the SDLC must be optimized in its entirety to ensure traceability across the process.
- Separate process from framework.
You don’t need to “Go Agile” or follow other industry jargon to effectively optimize your SDLC. - SDLC process improvement is ongoing.
Start with your team’s current capabilities and optimize. You should set expectations that new improvements will always come in the future.
Impact and Result
- Use a systematic framework to bring out local optimizations as potential candidates for SDLC optimization.
- Prioritize those candidates that will aid in optimizing the overall core SDLC process.
- Create the necessary governance and control structures to sustain the changes.
- Use Info-Tech tools and templates to accelerate your process optimization.
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read this Executive Brief to understand Info-Tech's approach to SDLC optimization and why the SDLC must be optimized in its entirety to ensure traceability across the process.
1. Document the current state of the SDLC
This phase of the blueprint will help in understanding the organization's business priorities, documenting the current SDLC process, and identifing current SDLC challenges.
2. Define root causes, determine optimization initiatives, and define target state
This phase of the blueprint, will help with defining root causes, determining potential optimization initiatives, and defining the target state of the SDLC.
3. Develop a rollout strategy for SDLC optimization
This phase of the blueprint will help with prioritizing initiatives in order to develop a rollout strategy, roadmap, and communication plan for the SDLC optimization.
Guided Implementations
This guided implementation is a three call advisory process.
Guided Implementation #1 - Document the current state of the SDLC
Call #1 - Discuss your current SDLC process and define current challenges.
Guided Implementation #2 - Define root causes, determine optimization initiatives, and define target state
Call #1 - Discover root causes and understand best practices to define potential optimization initiatives.
Guided Implementation #3 - Develop a rollout strategy for SDLC optimization
Call #1 - Define your SDLC target state, prioritize activities based on your resources and initiative complexity, and define your rollout strategy.
Info-Tech Academy
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Application Development Throughput Course
Local optimization isn’t the answer – you must examine the entire SDLC.
This course makes up part of the Applications Certificate.
Course information:
- Title: Application Development Throughput Course
- Number of Course Modules: 4
- Estimated Time to Complete: 2-2.5 hours
- Featured Analysts:
- Altaz Valani, Sr. Research Director, Applications Practice
- Gord Harrison, SVP of Research and Advisory
- Now Playing: Academy: Application Development Throughput | Executive Brief
Book Your Workshop
Onsite workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Document Your Current SDLC
The Purpose
- Understand SDLC current state.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Understanding of your current SDLC state and metrics to measure the success of your SDLC optimization initiative.
Activities
Outputs
Document the key business objectives that your SDLC delivers upon.
- Documented business objectives
Document your current SDLC process using a SIPOC process map.
- Documented SIPOC process map
Identify appropriate metrics in order to track the effectiveness of your SDLC optimization.
- Identified metrics to measure the effectiveness of your SDLC optimization
Document the current state process flow of each SDLC phase.
- Documented current state process flows of each SDLC phase
Document the control points and tools used within each phase.
- Documented control points and tools used within each SDLC phase
Module 2: Assess Challenges and Define Root Causes
The Purpose
- Understand current SDLC challenges and root causes.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Understand the core areas of your SDLC that require optimization.
Activities
Outputs
Identify the current challenges that exist within each SDLC phase.
- Identified current challenges
Determine the root cause of the challenges that exist within each SDLC phase.
- Identified root causes of your SDLC challenges
Module 3: Determine Your SDLC Optimization Initiatives
The Purpose
- Understand common best practices and the best possible optimization initiatives to help optimize your current SDLC.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Understand the best ways to address your SDLC challenges.
Activities
Outputs
Define optimization initiatives to address the challenges in each SDLC phase.
- Defined list of potential optimization initiatives to address SDLC challenges
Module 4: Define SDLC Target State
The Purpose
- Define your SDLC target state while maintaining traceability across your overall SDLC process.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Understand what will be required to reach your optimized SDLC.
Activities
Outputs
Determine the target state of your SDLC.
- Determined SDLC target state
Determine the people, tools, and control points necessary to achieve your target state.
- Identified people, processes, and tools necessary to achieve target state
Assess the traceability between phases to ensure a seamlessly optimized SDLC.
- Completed traceability alignment map and prioritized list of initiatives
Module 5: Prioritize Initiatives and Develop Rollout Strategy
The Purpose
- Define how you will reach your target state.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Create a plan of action to achieve your desired target state.
Activities
Outputs
Gain the full scope of effort required to implement your SDLC optimization initiatives.Gain the full scope of effort required to implement your SDLC optimization initiatives.
- Level of effort required to implement your SDLC optimization initiatives
Identify the enablers and blockers of your SDLC optimization.
- Identified enablers and blockers of your SDLC optimization
Define your SDLC optimization roadmap.
- Defined optimization roadmap
Create a communication plan to share initiatives with the business.
- Completed communication plan to present your optimization strategy to stakeholders
