How to keep on digitizing when the going gets tough?
12.03.2021
According to a recent survey conducted by SWZD
among 1000+ tech buyers across Europe
and North America, the vast majority of companies expect... more
Once you have embarked on your digital journey there is no turning back. Shorter innovation cycles, larger project portfolios, agile development methods and new technologies drive up complexity. With core business propositions getting digitized, it is more important than ever to deliver in time and quality. In parallel, IT budgets are rapidly increasing and more often than not are slipping out of control.
In this new digital world sophisticated IT sourcing should provide significant benefits beyond procurement excellence and budget control
Nearshore:
Incentive Based:
Project: 1
Progress: 0%
Supplier: A
Delay: 0%
Project: 2
Progress: 0%
Supplier: B
Delay: 0%
Project: 3
Progress: 0%
Supplier: C
Delay: 0%
Project: 4
Progress: 0%
Supplier: D
Delay: 0%
Project: 5
Progress: 0%
Supplier: E
Delay: 0%
Average project delay 30%:
Time on incidents 20%:
Rationalization index 0.10:
Best-in-class priced seniority:
Based on project and industry benchmarks.
Near-shoring has become a major trend in IT services procurement and can provide businesses with major benefits such as
In addition to selecting the right partner, near-shoring needs to be setup and managed correctly to realize its full potential.
Contact us to learn more% nearshoring = developer hours nearshore / total developer hours within a given period; nearshore meaning nearby countries with lower factor costs
Achieving a positive ROI of IT projects and meeting business-relevant milestones is closely linked to providing the right incentives to suppliers and project resources. However, a lot can go wrong here. A common mistake is for instance having rules that are too complex or establishing rules that do not sufficiently take into account external dependencies. Choosing the right method for measuring results plays a role too.
The challenge of defining incentive-based contracts is often underestimated and requires a lot of experience.
Contact us to learn more% incentive based contracts = Total Purchase volume of contracts using a system of explicit rewards or benefits for suppliers to support the achievement of goals / total contract volume
With agile development widely adopted, it has become easier than ever to track and monitor development progress by using the appropriate tools. For instance, there is no excuse why delays can only be detected late in a project’s lifecycle.
Because risks can now be managed and mitigated much easier than previously possible, sourcing managers can establish certain KPIs to help enforce contract compliance by suppliers, in particular for business critical services and systems.
Controlling the collaboration environment for developers is a precondition for companies to achieve a greater transparency. IT sourcing can be instrumental in enforcing organizational and process improvements that determine efficient and effective relationships with technology suppliers and partners.
Contact us to learn more% contract compliance = total project days delayed / total planned project days at a specific date
Very often, developers get swapped in and out of projects because they are needed otherwise. In a typical outsourcing scenario this happens mostly unnoticed.
However, high developer churn means that learning effects and productivity gains can not be realized over time.
The impact of high churn is measurable and significant. Thus, It sourcing must establish and agree on rules & guidelines to limit developer churn.
Contact us to learn more% developer churn = developer hours with tenure below 3 months / total developer hours within a given period
Without a doubt, utilization rate is one of the most important metrics for your developer team. That’s because this measurement gives you insight into whether or not your developers are working effectively.
Unfortunately, there is no unified way of measuring the utilization rate. How much time is spent on writing code? How much time is spent on analysing unclear business requirements. How much time is idle, i.e. time spend waiting for a project to start or for code pieces to be delivered by collaborators or idle time at the end of a project. Idle time is very costly.
Develper utilization must be measured and should be agreed with external suppliers.
Contact us to learn more% developer utilization = developer hours on tasks / total developer hours within a given period
The line between an incident and a service request is often quite blurry. All the issues and requests raised by users are often collectively grouped together as incidents under incident management.
However with the right service desk setup true incidents, i.e. unplanned service interruption or a reduction in the quality of service, can be separated out and the effort spent on dealing with incidents and bugs can be measured.
Not paying sufficient attention to incident management is costly, devastating to SLAs and hinders organizational growth. Once incident management gets automated, i.e standardized root-cause analysis, automated corrective and preventive actions, centralized reporting and metrics etc., it becomes important to track improvement.
Contact us to learn more% time on incidents = developer hours used to fix bugs / total developer hours on new tasks within a given period
A modern micro-service architecture has major advantages over “glue code” such as accelerated time-to-market, support of agile organization structures, scalability, resilience, security and compliance to only name a few.
As APIs also enable build vs. buy decisions, many organizations now work with external APIs in a growing ecosystem of suppliers and business partners.
Cost of external APIs need to be negotiated and performance must be carefully monitored and measured. Because this is a relatively new territory, the support of experienced negotiators can make a big difference.
Contact us to learn moreRationalization index = average cost per API call (indexed) / API call volume (indexed) within a given period
In new digital service development the quality of senior developers is essential for the success of any IT project. At the same time, the supply and demand for senior developers have never been as out of sync as it is right now. Very often, senior developers will be hired as independent contractors.
Ask yourself the following questions:
Finding the right answers to the above questions takes a lot experience and the right evalution methodology.
Contact us to learn more% best-in-class priced seniority = senior developer hours priced at industry benchmark / total senior developer hours within a given period
Over the years we have worked with many companies to improve and evolve their IT-sourcing practices, realizing significant cost reductions. We have further developed our IT sourcing framework to encompass the challenges posed by new digital business models. Our unique approach combines traditional IT sourcing best-practices with our deep understanding of agile development to ensure success in the digital economy.
Let's work together to create more value for your company with the money you spend on IT.
Let's talk12.03.2021
According to a recent survey conducted by SWZD
among 1000+ tech buyers across Europe
and North America, the vast majority of companies expect... more
04.12.2020
Once you have embarked on your digital journey, there is no turning back. There
is only the road ahead of you. This is true for your digital services as it is
true for your steadily... more
