Analyst Perspective

Evolve Your Software Development Lifecycle Into a Solution Delivery Lifecycle

Pure Waterfall is vanishing. It’s time to move on.

The world, our organizations, and customer needs are changing too fast for monolithic projects to take months to years to be implemented. We need that value and those improvements – now! The shift to product management and product delivery (using Agile DevOps) was intended to provide methodologies to deliver work in smaller iterations focused on higher ROI changes. Few teams can operate in a pure Agile methodology (e.g. Scrum), and those challenges magnify with scale and the rising complexity of our solutions. How do you ensure quality, value, and compliance across many teams all operating differently?

Now is the time to shift to a holistic solution delivery lifecycle approach. Solution management is more than throughput and quality within your traditional software development lifecycle that only addresses product development. Expand your framework to include improving intake (product management) and operations (connected through DevOps). Your Solution DLC is the backbone for quality and governance while allowing for localized optimization within the teams’ methodologies.

Hans Eckman Principal Research Director, Application Delivery and Management Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

• Delivery groups respond to immediate business concerns without understanding how or why they are doing what they are doing.
• Organizations lack the critical capabilities and resources needed to satisfy their growing backlog, jeopardizing solution success.
• Groups are locally successful in delivering changes but rarely aligned with enterprise priorities.
• Release communication and operational support are missing from delivery cycles.

Common Obstacles

• Mounting market and leadership pressure cause delivery teams to release new features quickly with insufficient quality.
• Increasingly complicated solutions require more resources to work together in lockstep.
• Teams focus on localized feature delivery and don’t have time to think about what enterprise success looks like.
• Teams move to doing Scrum, rather than adopting an Agile mindset, missing the key advantages.

Info-Tech’s Approach

• The solution tent is bigger than just development: Take a holistic view to include people, processes, and systems.
• Transition to smaller iterations and more frequent releases to support organizational agility.
• Embed adaptive governance between phases and within the steps of each phase.
• Tune your solution delivery lifecycle (Solution DLC) to your organizational needs and goals.
• Take a methodology-agnostic approach to empower teams closest to the problems.

Info-Tech Insight

A solution delivery lifecycle encompasses the people, processes, and tools needed to deliver value to the end consumers of the solution. Expand your approach to drive your software development lifecycle (product delivery) to include intake, product management, operations, and value measurement.

Insight summary

Overarching insight

The tent is bigger than just your SDLC (software development lifecycle).
A solution delivery lifecycle encompasses the people, processes, and tools needed to deliver value to the end consumers of the solution. Expand your approach to drive your software delivery lifecycle (product delivery) to include intake, product management, operations, and value measurement.

Phase 1 insight

Waterfall SDLC is done. Shift from start-and-stop “projects” to a model of iterative solution enhancements and continuous delivery of value to meet the needs of your customers, teammates, and enterprise goals. Understand the gaps in SLDC performance to create a stable Solution DLC backbone.

Phase 2 insight

Put “solutions” back as the focus of your delivery lifecycle. When teams focus on “software” we miss that software is a tool contributing to a capability. Teams should focus on the overall solution space (people, process, and tools) to ensure we are delivering the highest ROI changes.

Phase 3 insight

Business unit integration is not optional. The business units must be involved in guiding solution delivery efforts, measuring value realization, and aligning roadmaps to strategic goals. A culture of continuous improvement and value alignment is critical for proper solution delivery.

Tactical insight

Your problem isn’t the wrong or missing SDLC. Embed quality and compliance standards into each step of your delivery team’s methodology using definitions of done.

Tactical insight

Delivery quality and throughput go hand in hand. Focus on meeting minimum process and product quality standards first. Improved throughput will eventually follow.

The highway to success is wider than just development.

Info-Tech Insight

A solution is broader than software and software development. Solutions connect consumer needs with the systems and operations that fill the need and provide perceived value.

Close the gap between IT services and business goals

43% of CEOs believe that business goals are going unsupported by IT.

60% of CEOs believe that improvement is required around IT’s understanding of business goals.

80% of CIOs/CEOs are misaligned on the target role for IT.

30% of business stakeholders are supporters of their IT departments. (N=32,536)

(Info-Tech CIO/CEO Alignment Diagnostics N=124)

Even with delivery improvements, organizations are still not able to keep up

73% of organizations report they do not have enough resources to meet incoming demand. (Source: Planview, 2017)

46% of organizations report they do not collaborate well on projects. (Source: Planview, 2017)

Download Build an Application Department Strategy for additional assistance.

The way you deliver solutions needs be grounded in how you do business

Your priorities and requirements continually change. Leverage a process that embraces this reality; don’t simply ignore it!

Traditional SDLCs are often interpreted as a sequential process that creates siloed, one-and-done thinking about product delivery. Today’s products are subject to volatility and change, especially those with long shelf lives. This reality implies continuous product improvement, but it doesn’t explicitly call it out, resulting in resource mismanagement for enhancements.

Your solution delivery lifecycle (Solution DLC) connects all aspects of your product delivery lifecycle, development, and operations. This lifecycle must accommodate today’s realities: changing business priorities and constant product modifications. Execution should be flexible and interpretable to use the optimal methodology.

Connect all phases with a solution-centric approach that goes from the first idea all way through to maintenance.

Take a full solution approach to transform into a partner and innovator

“Solutions” doesn’t just mean technology! Solutions can involve multiple systems, applications, platforms, and operational areas

Make your Solution DLC methodology- agnostic

Your Solution DLC is the framework that holds your entire product lifecycle together into loops of continuous improvement. It should allow teams to optimize how they complete the phases and steps.

Solution delivery lifecycle

• A complete framework to manage and deliver value to a group of consumers.

Software development lifecycle

• Common processes to develop and implement changes to a solution.

Methodology

• Prescriptive steps define how to complete the steps within a phase or multiple phases.

Methodology examples:

• Agile: Scrum, Kanban, DevOps, etc.
• Scaled Agile: SAFe, Disciplined, Scrum of Scrums, etc.
• Rational unified process
• Extreme programming

Deliver what’s right by always delivering

Minimum viable products (MVPs) should be engrained in your Solution DLC as a valuable approach to both deliver value and validate that you are delivering the right value at the right time to your users and stakeholders.

Delivering in Waterfall/All-At-Once

Delivering via Agile/Iterative - Makes it easier to deliver the right thing.

Info-Tech Insight

Increasing solution value requires ensuring the changes add value and delivering that value as soon as practical.

Other considerations for MVP include:

• MLP - Minimum Lovable Product
• MMP - Minimum Marketable Product
• SLC - Simple, Lovable, Compact

(Auvee, Earteza. “Alternative to the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) Founders May Consider.” Impala Intech. 14 April 2023.)

• SMURFS - Specifically Marketable, Useful, Releasable Feature Set

(Barcomb, Matthew. “Instead of MVPs, Maybe We Should Be Releasing SMURFS” Agile Connection. 18 September 2016)

Prepare for the end of pure Waterfall delivery

Waterfall is not aligned with how organizations wish to define and deliver solutions.

Waterfall is an inefficient approach for reducing risk and accelerating value delivery with many drawbacks, including:

• Lack of flexibility
• Difficulty in measuring progress
• Difficulties with scope creep
• Limited stakeholder involvement
• Long feedback loops

48% had project deadlines more than double.

85% exceeded their original budget by at least 20%.

25% at least doubled their original budget.

Becoming more agile does not remove any steps; the focus changes from the project to the backlog item

Each backlog item goes through each phase and step during its lifecycle; however, the process of all backlog items is iterative. Groups of backlog items can move through the phases as a team where dependencies or a common release is needed. To enable organizational agility, our goal is to reduce complexity, interdependencies, and waste (LEAN) in the process to deliver backlog items sooner.

Info-Tech Insight

One of the primary confusions for teams shifting to iterative delivery is between the steps needed for individual backlog items and the need to complete the same step for all backlog items at the same time before proceeding.

Solution DLC requires adaptive governance

Apply adaptive governance to your Solution DLC

Adaptive governance in the Solution DLC is defined and enforced through the Definition of Done. Each team’s “Definition of Done” is adapted to meet the risks and complexity of the solution and changes. Governance shifts to be outcome-based and a validation that the team is following their Definition of Done. This ensures accountability and empowerment for the roles that should be accountable. Defining a model RACI will help with adoption.

Handoffs represent the highest risk and opportunity for errors. Solution DLC adaptive governance (purple arrow) is primarily applied and validated between phases. Within each phase, governance and the Definition of Done apply to the handoff in each step.