Modernize Your SDLC

Deliver quality software faster with new tools and practices.

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Contributors

Paul Dowman, Founder and CTO, OK GROW!
Emilio Chemali, Director of Business Intelligence & Analytics, MRE Consulting Ltd.
Nico Kruger, General Manager for Helix ALM and Hansoft, Perforce
Matt Rowley, Partner, Wipfli LLP
Benjamin Palacio, Information Systems Analyst, County of Placer
Jack Bowersox Jr., Software Quality Assurance Supervisor, Mutual Benefit Group
Fernando Valera, CTO, Visure Solutions
Trevor Farnum, Vice President of Technology, Data Recognition Corporation
Scott Ambler, Senior Consulting Partner, Scott Ambler + Associates
Scott Ion, Director of IT Digital, Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO)
Eugene Sokhransky, Head of Business Development and Product Expert, ALM Works
Jim McCormack, Director of Application Development, Farm Credit Financial Partners, Inc.
Ian Prinsloo, Director, Treasury Technology, Central 1 Credit Union
5 anonymous contributors

Today’s rapidly scaling and increasingly complex products create mounting pressure on delivery teams to release new features and changes quickly and with sufficient quality.
Many organizations lack the critical capabilities and resources needed to satisfy their growing backlog, jeopardizing product success.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

Delivery quality and throughput go hand in hand. Focus on meeting minimum process and product quality standards first. Improved throughput will eventually follow.
Business integration is not optional. The business must be involved in guiding delivery efforts, and ongoing validation and verification product changes.
The software development lifecycle (SDLC) must deliver more than software. Business value is generated through the products and services delivered by your SDLC. Teams must provide the required product support and stakeholders must be willing to participate in the product’s delivery.

Impact and Result

Standardize your definition of a successful product. Come to an organizational agreement of what defines a high-quality and successful product. Accommodate both business and IT perspectives in your definition.
Clarify the roles, processes, and tools to support business value delivery and satisfy stakeholder expectations. Indicate where and how key roles are involved throughout product delivery to validate and verify work items and artifacts. Describe how specific techniques and tools are employed to meet stakeholder requirements.
Focus optimization efforts on most affected stages. Reveal the health of your SDLC from the value delivery, business and technical practice quality standards, discipline, throughput, and governance perspectives with a diagnostic. Identify and roadmap the solutions to overcome the root causes of your diagnostic results.

Start here – read the Executive Brief

Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should modernize your SDLC, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

Modernize Your SDLC – Executive Brief

1. Set your SDLC context

State the success criteria of your SDLC practice through the definition of product quality and organizational priorities. Define your SDLC current state.

2. Diagnose your SDLC

Build your SDLC diagnostic framework based on your practice’s product and process objectives. Root cause your improvement opportunities.

3. Modernize your SDLC

Learn of today’s good SDLC practices and use them to address the root causes revealed in your SDLC diagnostic results.

Guided Implementations

This guided implementation is a seven call advisory process.

Guided Implementation #1 - Set your SDLC context

Call #1 - Discuss your quality and product definitions and how quality is interpreted from both business and IT perspectives.

Call #2 - Review your case for the strengthening of your SDLC practice.

Call #3 - Review the current state of your roles, processes, and tools in your organization.

Guided Implementation #2 - Diagnose your SDLC

Call #1 - Discuss the components of your diagnostic framework.

Call #2 - Review the results of your SDLC diagnostic.

Guided Implementation #3 - Modernize your SDLC

Call #1 - Discuss the SDLC practices used in the industry.

Call #2 - Review the scope and achievability of your SDLC optimization initiatives.

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: Set Your SDLC Context

The Purpose

Discuss your quality and product definitions and how quality is interpreted from both business and IT perspectives.
Review your case for strengthening your SDLC practice.
Review the current state of your roles, processes, and tools in your organization.

Key Benefits Achieved

Grounded understanding of products and quality that is accepted across the organization.
Clear business and IT objectives and metrics that dictate your SDLC practice’s success.
Defined SDLC current state people, process, and technologies.

Activities

Outputs

1.1

Define your products and quality.

Product and quality definitions.

1.2

Define your SDLC objectives.

SDLC business and technical objectives and vision.

1.3

Measure your SDLC effectiveness.

SDLC metrics.

1.4

Define your current SDLC state.

SDLC capabilities, processes, roles and responsibilities, resourcing model, and tools and technologies.

Module 2: Diagnose Your SDLC

The Purpose

Discuss the components of your diagnostic framework.
Review the results of your SDLC diagnostic.

Key Benefits Achieved

SDLC diagnostic framework tied to your SDLC objectives and definitions.
Root causes to your SDLC issues and optimization opportunities.

Activities

Outputs

2.1

Build your diagnostic framework.

SDLC diagnostic framework.

2.2

Diagnose your SDLC.

Root causes to SDLC issues and optimization opportunities.

Module 3: Modernize Your SDLC

The Purpose

Discuss the SDLC practices used in the industry.
Review the scope and achievability of your SDLC optimization initiatives.

Key Benefits Achieved

Knowledge of good practices that can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of your SDLC.
Realistic and achievable SDLC optimization roadmap.

Activities

Outputs

3.1

Learn and adopt SDLC good practices.

Optimization initiatives and target state SDLC practice.

3.2

Build your optimization roadmap.

SDLC optimization roadmap, risks and mitigations, and stakeholder communication flow.

After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this Blueprint, and what our clients have to say.

Client

Experience

Impact

$ Saved

Days Saved

Testimonial

Ipex Management Inc.

Guided Implementation

9/10

N/A

Ipex Management Inc.

Guided Implementation

9/10

N/A

LMI Aerospace

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

Alex gave me clear and immediate suggestions to alleviate some of my pain points. Which tells me he clearly understood what I'd shared with him. I left the meeting with a clear understanding of next steps and fully trusting that Alex "gets it" and has th...

CNSI

Guided Implementation

8/10

$1,256

Best Part: I enjoy the collaboration on research material/data. Worst Part: None.

Mott MacDonald LLC

Guided Implementation

9/10

$6,927

Maryland State Highway Administration

Workshop

9/10

$31,940

Bill and Scott were excellent facilitators and offered such a variety of examples and knowledge for us to compare and work with. i was impressed with how our team stayed focused and engaged all week! Not easy for a gorup of IT mgmt!~ Not really any bad ...

The University of Texas at San Antonio

Workshop

9/10

N/A

Annual resource cost savings may be offset by tools cost Validation of team members pain points was aligned with Management view of the pain points.

Asian Development Bank

Guided Implementation

9/10

$37,686

N/A

Best: Good prep discussion with clear next step Worst: For the type of discussion, perhaps participants could have been smaller.

Employment and Social Development Canada

Workshop

10/10

$1M

120

What I really appreciate is the flexibility of the facilitators to adapt to our specific needs and requests. The materials offered by InfoThech was really useful and saved us a lot of time. It also gave us a foundation to start with instead of doing it a...

CI Investments

Guided Implementation

10/10

$600K

100

Because I was able to review the slide deck with Cole before he presented it to the larger group, he was able to tailor it to our specific challenges and concerns. It made for a very impactful presentation and a productive discussion. There was no way to avoid it, but a couple of our key players could not attend the session. Their input would have helped paint a broader picture.

Scientific Games Corporation

Guided Implementation

10/10

$12,733

The best part of this week?s feedback regarding the Executive presentation was to focus on the benefit for the SDLC improvement. Open to a presentation not normal style, understanding the method used and providing guidance that improved it. We greatly appreciated it. The worst part of this week?s feedback was the silence during certain parts. It made us think we were totally going down the wrong path. This ended up not being true.

Fastenal Company

Workshop

7/10

N/A

I enjoyed the classroom experience. I think it served as a good team building exercise for the participants. I am unsure what the impact of the event and resulting efforts will be at this point in time. It has provided motivation and a common ground for discussion with the people who attended.

Scientific Games Corporation

Guided Implementation

9/10

$35,017

Best experience - Having someone to talk with and guide me through what I already completed and what the next steps to improve or ensure successful accomplishment. Worst experience - Not being reassured I am on the right track. Doubtful or doubting myself.

Envista Forensics

Guided Implementation

9/10

N/A

Anthem Entertainment

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

Scientific Games Corporation

Workshop

10/10

$127K

The best experience of the SDLC workshop is the SG team working together to have an initial process and roadmap as a reference to jumpstart working on improvements after Info-Tech training is complete. The worst experience of the SDLC workshop is the SG team over passionate about the work facilitated by Info-Tech everyone having conversations at the same time and elementary clapping had to take place to gain control.

UGI Utilities, Inc

Guided Implementation

9/10

$127K

Andrew clearly masters the topic. It was an introductory call, but we had reviewed the executive briefing in advanced. We were ready to more in depth conversations.