The Challenge

Everything looked great on surface. Working code was being delivered to production on a somewhat regular basis. But how efficiently was it being delivered? Was the software of high quality? How difficult was it to make to make a change? How hard was it to support? How well did the code perform in production? Were the users satisfied with the product? Was it worth the cost? Was IT doing well? Getting better? Or worse???

Sadly, the answers to these questions were not easy to obtain. Getting the answers, if they were available at all, took very different paths depending on the department and team. Some teams were eager to share how well they were doing, while others not so much.

After years of custom development by separate teams for each business domain, both on- and off-shore, the client was faced with the reality that essentially every team had solved the challenges of software development and delivery in very different ways. It was difficult to gather any meaningful metrics to demonstrate how well or poorly the lifecycle was performing. There were so many differences in the development pipeline that it was difficult to move team members from one team to another, not to mention that it was difficult to onboard new team members. Further, the client faced immense difficulty implementing cross-cutting enterprise-wide changes due to the lack of standardization and consistency. It was hard to demonstrate the value of the investment in IT.

Our Approach

Our approach was simple - seek to understand. Assess the situation using a repeatable and fair framework and focus on the facts. We interviewed key stakeholders, both in management as well as on the ground. We scoured key documents, reports, and even live system metrics where we could. In the end we provided an unbiased assessment of the client's current state DevOps practices.

Once the assessment was complete, we moved on to defining the future-state strategy. We met with key stakeholders to understand their vision of the future and provided perspectives on where the industry currently is and the direction it is moving. Together we defined a future-state target for the client, and a path for how to get there.

Our Impact

With the current-state assessment and future-state recommendations in hand, the client had the justification and projected value in proceeding with improvements in the DevOps process. The strategy provided not only the Business Case for investment in this set of initiatives, but also laid the groundwork for being able to justify future investment in IT. Executing the roadmap meant that IT would now be in a position to show the value it was delivering and demonstrate improvement over time.

Vexev Solution