In last week’s Field Note, I shared a brief story about Bill and Sally - specifically, the “road to nowhere” that their development partners led them down. To get caught up, you can check out last week’s blog here.
I summary, both Bill and Sally, leaders of two different companies, working with two different software development outsource partners, ended up in the same, unhappy situation - 12 to 18 months of development time and money spent, with nothing to show for it except assurances that their software was almost ready.
For those of you new to this blog, I should share with you that I have been on both sides of the software outsourcing transaction. For many years, I was an executive in various companies that used outsourced help. It is only in the last 6 years, that I have been helping mid-market companies use outsource developers to accomplish their goals. So, while what happened to Bill and Sally never happened to me, the only reason it never happened was because of my approach to building software - regardless of who is actually doing the coding. And, I use that same approach to ensure none of my customers end up on that same road to nowhere.
How do we do that?
At 8 Penny Labs, we lead our customers through our strategic roadmapping process. This process aligns their technology strategy with the goals of their business. If they don’t have a technology strategy, they do by the time our process is completed. More importantly, when they have a strategic roadmap, they are able to observe progress from where and when they start through to completion. The starting place and the end point are two critical pieces of information - if you are going to plot a course to some future situation, you must know both.
With your starting point and your end point, you can plan for the interim situations along the way and estimate the time to get to each AND what will be delivered at each stop. This gives you a baseline from which to manage customer expectations, budget and business objectives.
Why is that important?
Without the ability to know when the capabilities that you are spending time and money developing will be available for your company to use - how do you manage your business? Software is never built for its own sake. Software enables capabilities that are helpful to your business. That help is used to meet your strategic objectives - or it isn’t.
Often, the software you are building is a critical component that enables your business to deliver on its commitments - to customers, employees, vendors, partners, etc. Yet, many software development efforts aren’t managed with the care and skill required to be on-time and on-budget to fulfill their strategic objectives. It can start with at simple question.
Are you on track?
This question implies you know where you are going and when you will arrive…
That means, that you always know the current situation of the development effort. You know which of your digital transformation’s strategic objectives are being delivered and when they will be available to your company. If you can’t answer these questions reliably, there is a better question to ask. We will cover that next week.
For now, if you are skeptical about the software development practices you are employing at your company and what to talk, reach out, we’re here to help.
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