Clients & Case Studies

Case Study 2

Convergys improves decisions making in software product development.

A summary case study of one client and some of the value delivered by DCG consultants

About two years before the date of this writing, DCG CEO, Mike Harris, received a call out of the blue from a senior manager at our Client,

“We have a problem with our software development group. I have been reviewing your website amongst some others and I think you might be able to help us. We make our money by selling software products and related services to our customers around the world so software development is critical to what we do. But, at the senior management level, all of our discussions and decisions about our software development are driven by emotions not data. How can you help us measure our software development group?”

Mike’s initial response was,

“Well, I don’t know if we can help you yet but it sounds like you might have two initial problems: Governance and Measurement. DCG does not believe in collecting measurement data if it is not going to be used to make decisions. When DCG talk about governance of software development, we are talking about three things: What decisions need to be made, Who makes them (one person) and how do they get made (what people have input and what data is needed). Let’s talk some more.”

Discussions with President and the Head of Software Development led to an initial engagement to review the governance and measurement of the software development group in parallel with the governance work leading as it always should.

How was DCG’s commitment to value evident from the start of the relationship?

Agile approach to consulting - When the engagement with Convergys started, the priorities beyond the initial pain statement were not clear to either DCG or our Client. Further, having never worked with DCG, our Client was not sure if DCG consultants would be able to establish the right relationship with their senior management team. DCG is proud to make a priority of continuously learning from its experiences and environment and trying to innovate new approaches. One of our innovations seemed to be a good fit for the initial engagement with our Client – an agile approach to consulting. Our Client liked this approach because if all went well, they could reprioritize the problems they wanted DCG to tackle every month based on current needs. If things went badly, they could terminate the DCG at the end of any month but hold and retain the value from each previous months work.

How did the relationship evolve from the initial engagement?

As part of the measurement consulting engagement, DCG performed two benchmarks of the Software Development group: a top-down benchmark comparing against competitors using the company financial statements as a starting point; and a bottom-up benchmark using existing and DCG measured metrics from projects as a starting point. From the top-down benchmark, DCG were able to report to the company that while average cost per head of the software development group was relatively low, the level of outsourcing used to manage variable demand for software development services was limiting the organizations ability to respond to more customer demand AND maintain progress on internal product development.

As a result of this report, the Client Senior Management Team decided to implement and project to develop more outsourcing options to transfer at least some of the strain of flexing to variable demand onto some outsourcing partners. In early 2010, the Software Development Management team were immersed in several big customer projects so DCG offered to kick start the development of outsourcing options by performing the discovery exercise and vendor selection process up to the point of providing a recommended plan of action for the Software development Management team to execute with the vendors they decided to select from the DCG recommendations. The results achieved are commented on by the CFO, who was the executive sponsor of this initiative, at the bottom of this Case Study.

The relationship continued with our CEO, Mike Harris, standing in as Head of Product Management for Convergys Information Management for 9 months. The story of that engagement is covered in another Case Study.

What did our Client achieve?

Data-based decision making – Governance
Software Development Governance Committee chaired by CFO. Forum for Software development and Product Management (representing the rest of the business) executives to discuss issues monthly.

Product Review Board – forum for Product Management, Software Developmentand Finance to manage changes to the content and budget allocations of the Product Development Plan of Record.

Visibility – Measurement – New metrics were added to the existing Software Development Performance Dashboard reviewed by senior management monthly.

Outsourcing Options increased from 3% to 15% of total software development resource headcount with agreements in place with outsourcing providers to flex totals as needed.

What does the client say about the value from the relationship today?

Bob Lento, President: “I would definitely describe them as experts in their field. They have put us in a position where now we can react more quickly to things happening in our business and be more flexible in terms of our approach to producing products. They definitely brought a level of expertise that didn’t exist in our organization. …. We are much more disciplined now than we were before, much more flexible in our approach to how we manage the business which has helped us be more flexible to our customers and I absolutely give the majority of the credit to Mike Harris and his team for doing that.”