meeting software deadlines avoiding nightmares

Custom Software

Some Alarming Statistics

Hardly 2.5% of organizations globally manage to finish

100% of their projects.

More than 30% of projects are devoid of baseline.

In almost 75% of cases, key IT stakeholders are under

the impression that the project will fail at one point or

the other of the project.

Generally 40% of respondents feel that their business

objectives were unclear.

With smaller projects, there is a 70% chance of timely

completion in the agreed cost

Challenges in Meeting Custom Software Delivery & Implementation Deadlines

Constantly Changing Requirements

The term “custom” is sufficient to indicate that the development is not going to be simple

01The slightest change in requirements is sufficient to disturb the development phase, and also result in a lag in the SDLC

02IT defined requirements must be mapped to business objectives to ensure clarity at as many stages as possible

03

Complex Integration into

Existing Software

Customized deployment may be required for final

integration with rest of the IT environment

QA testing may not have considered live

production integration challenges, resulting in

schedule lag

“The nightmares that the deadlines give are not without its reasons. The challenges for custom software solutions are huge and require acumen and maturity to be tackled”

Dependencies on Different Teams

In Customized software delivery, a team is just

waiting for another team’s work to finish before

proceeding with final implementation

Based on the complexity of customization, a

particular dependency may cause re-coding in

another part of the application

The end result would be schedule lag along with

cost considerations to resolve all dependencies

Procrastination It is observed that developers try and complete

the easy projects first while customized software

requirements are stuck in the pipeline

The Top Few Approaches to Meet the Deadlines

Risk Identification

It is vital for project managers & key IT

stakeholders to consider every project risk

minutely that can possibly hamper delivery

schedule

The project executives and key folks driving the

requirement need to understand that risks are not

just operational, they could have a profound

impact at strategic levels

Appropriate identification of mitigation or

contingency plans for each risk will ensure that

deadlines are not missed

Realistic Estimations

Attributes like enthusiasm & optimism need to

have a check while estimating software delivery

timelines

Accurate estimations with a 360 degree

consideration of each and every aspect that could

hamper project schedule

Effective Collaboration

Regular connects with the team are required to

identify any blockers and ensure that they are

removed in a timely fashion

Developers need to talk to QA, requirement owners

and other groups involved with final integration

Issue escalation at the right stage is also essential to

ensure deadlines are not missed and troubling

factors are effectively addressed

Knowledge sharing is also part of team collaboration

and is the responsibility of the manager in charge of

software delivery & implementation

“And of course, no point in shying away from the challenges. Well thought of approaches adopted by custom software development companies keep a project on track assuring that things go the way they are expected to”

Modular Approach

Adopting a modular approach that involves work

division among the right team or groups is

essential for project success

Resourcing To meet deadlines, it is essential that the right

resources are identified before the actual project

commencement

Metrics & Tracking

For all IT projects including software development,

periodic metrics reporting and tracking is of vital

importance

Metrics such as cost overrun, schedule slippage,

bugs detected, on time delivery become reliable

pointers and indicate the health of the project

Practical Project Execution Methodologies

DevOPS

It is all about syncing “development” &

“operations”

Teams that are already supporting the live

environment work in close collaboration with

teams that are introducing changes or developing

This leads to improved monitoring, faster bug

fixing and overall reduction in delivery deadlines

“Modern day project & service delivery solutions adopted by custom software development companies come up with practical approaches to keep the project timelines under check all the time.”

Agile & Continual Release Planning

Agile way of working will surely help reduce

schedule lag and it relies on continual planning &

course correction

Agile has higher scope of accommodating

revisions compared to routine software delivery

There are tools available in the market that

support continual releases right from

Development to QA testing

Case Study – Greeting in the Fast Lane

The Team and Tool Scenario

Consider the case study of a global greeting card manufacturer

The organization generates thousands of new as well as redesigned

greeting cards on a yearly basis

The technical team was stuck in a major transformation project and

were facing a huge number of problems in meeting deadlines for

solutions

The organization adopted an application performance monitoring tool

that keep track of development environment and keep replacing

multiple underperforming tools.

The tool aided significantly in troubleshooting when a particular error

was generated and could plot correlations with other components

The tool enables the team to pinpoint the root cause of high priority

issues and guide the developers where to begin investigation, while

removing roadblocks

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