everestgroup it servicedelivery optimization research 0215 1

r e s e a r c h . e v e r e s t g r p . c o m

2015

Optimizing IT Service Delivery: Technology is the

Answer

Harnessing the Power of Technology to

Unlock Business Value in IT Services

Jimit Arora, Vice President

Yugal Joshi, Practice Director

Copyright © 2015, Everest Global, Inc. All rights reserved.

AN EVEREST GROUP REPORT

EGR-2015-4-R-1387

This report has been licensed for exclusive use and distribution by Tata Consultancy Services.

http://research.everestgrp.com

OPTIMIZING IT SERVICE DELIVERY: TECHNOLOGY IS THE ANSWER

r e s e a r c h . e v e r e s t g r p . c o m 2

Executive Summary

As technology disruption continues at an unprecedented pace, IT service delivery

organizations are under significant pressure to respond to the rapidly changing

environment and establish themselves as a strategic business enabler. IT

organizations are expected to drive the adoption of next-generation IT, yet

manage traditional systems with the utmost cost efficiency and agility. Therefore,

they need to balance innovation with rigorous discipline. However, most IT

organizations struggle to effectively meet these conflicting expectations, given the

inherent inefficiencies in the traditional models of IT service delivery.

Most enterprises erroneously equate IT service delivery with IT support and,

therefore, are unable to achieve optimization across the entire value chain. This

suboptimal IT services approach impacts the ability of the enterprises to respond

to the market demands in a timely manner, and raises questions on their ability to

remain nimble, competitive, and relevant.

Everest Group research suggests that a large number of enterprises recognize this

source of value erosion and are adopting remedial steps to optimize IT services.

However, most efforts are piecemeal and, typically, focus on production support

versus the entire Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). These organizations

continue to exhibit over reliance on human skills and “run by memory” in IT

service delivery, which increases risks and compromises the user experience.

To achieve an optimized IT service delivery, enterprises must focus their efforts

across the entire SDLC. The complexity across SDLC processes requires

enterprises to leverage technology-driven initiatives that are not disjointed “point

solutions” but deliver “end-to-end” services for the application lifecycle.

Enterprises need to automate, industrialize, and digitize their processes to make

them measurable and aligned to industry best practices.

Most discussions around IT service delivery optimization emphasize “cultural

change” and “process overhaul” rather than pure technology. Our research

suggests that though these are indeed important, they are difficult to implement

and measure. Technology-driven IT service delivery optimization initiatives, on the

other hand, are measurable and generate tangible results. However, these

initiatives should not fundamentally disrupt ongoing IT service delivery. A strong

focus on cross-team collaboration and reliance on technology versus scattered,

fragmented, and inefficient processes residing in “team islands” will result in an

optimized IT service delivery.

This report analyzes existing challenges in IT service delivery and suggest

mitigation strategies to enable its optimization. The key areas of focus are:

Key challenges in existing practices for IT service delivery

Value erosion from suboptimal IT service delivery

Role of technology across the SDLC to optimize IT service delivery

Value and key success factors – technology-led IT service delivery optimization

This complimentary report was funded, in part by Tata Consultancy

Services

EGR-2015-4-R-1387




EGR-2015-4-R-1387

The State of IT Service Delivery

Enterprise IT is supposed to be everything to everyone. The IT services it delivers

are expected to keep systems running efficiently, save costs, transform legacy

platforms for future, and ensure innovation to drive business value. IT is

expected to be agile and continuously evolving to meet business demand. Be it

organically developed or acquired systems, age-old applications,

modernization, end-user experience management, or next-generation digital

initiatives, enterprise IT is expected to accommodate everyone.

Requirements from the business are growing in volume and complexity. With the

proliferation of next-generation services such as mobility, cloud, analytics, and

maintenance/transformation of the legacy environment, the demand on

delivering cost effective yet business-enabling IT service is creating further

challenges.

Still most enterprises are under an erroneous assumption that IT service implies

IT support. Therefore, they are disproportionately focused on infrastructure

operations. These organizations obsess over IT Service Management (ITSM) and

ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) frameworks. These principles though important,

focus more on supporting existing systems than transforming, modernizing, and

preparing systems for the future.

Shrinking product life cycles, increasing adoption of agile methodologies, and

DevOps strategies are pushing IT service delivery organizations to further

optimize operations. Many optimization initiatives that were implemented earlier

could not deliver meaningful value as these were largely focused on IT support.

Enterprises now require integrated technology solutions spanning the entire

application lifecycle that can truly optimize IT service delivery compared to the

earlier piecemeal approach.

Business

requirements

Agility

Efficiency

InnovationSustainability




IT Service Delivery – Key Challenges

The evolution of most enterprise IT organizations has, typically, been ad-hoc

and reactive. As a result, IT service organizations rarely adopt a comprehensive

end-to-end and consistent model for development and support. Multiple (often

redundant) systems are developed to cater to specific business requirements,

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) bring a plethora of systems, and a

geographically-distributed structure, where teams collaborate across the globe,

further adds to the complexity.

In such an environment, Enterprise IT needs to manage challenges across three

primary dimensions viz., people, process, and information as depicted in

Exhibit 1. Overdependence on human effort, fragmented management of the

application lifecycle, disparate information sources for systems, and poor

adherence to enterprise-wide best practices are some of the key challenges in

IT service delivery.

People-related challenges

IT service delivery is almost entirely “effort driven”. The cost, quality, and end-

user experience vary significantly based on the skills of the people involved. This

is in contrast to leveraging repeatable and automated processes that can

consistently deliver business-aligned IT services.

Further, sporadic industrialization and automation is unable to provide the

needed IT service delivery optimization. IT resources spend significant amount

of time on tasks such as test data generation, data masking, gathering

information about applications, manually analyzing legacy applications, and

fragmented project management, rather than focusing on creating consistently

excellent IT service.

EGR-2015-4-R-1387

Key challenges in IT service

delivery

E X H I B I T 1

Source: Everest Group

People

rela

ted

IT service delivery

challenges

Process

rela

ted

Information related

Limited end-to-end

application lifecycle

management

Poor adherence to

process standards

and benchmarks

Islands of information that

inhibit inhibiting effective

collaboration

Poor information

management that impacts

impacting systems lifecycle

Overdependence

on manual effort

Low value work,

which consumes

significant time




Process-related challenges

Most organizations, fully or partially, follow ITSM processes to align IT service

delivery with business objectives. However, little focus is given to data-driven

analysis for adherence across the SDLC. For example, very few organizations

deploy automated mechanisms to analyze adherence to best practices for code

development (e.g., code reuse, prototyping) to minimize technical debt.

Further, enterprises have fragmented governance processes to manage their IT

service landscape from development to production support. They do not have

access to “one view” of performance across internal and external service

providers. Various IT projects create their own version of best practices without

organization-wide validation. These create significant cost overheads and

islands of scattered best practices with limited value.

Information-related challenges

Enterprise IT teams have vast pools of internal or “tribal” knowledge. However,

most of it is hardwired rather than documented. The knowledge within teams is

rarely disseminated, creating significant challenges in transformational

initiatives. The meta-data related to IT inventory (e.g., legacy systems) is either

unavailable or fragmented, and rarely stored in a central platform.

Moreover, there is little cross-team collaboration and information exchange due

to lack of an engaging platform. Information sources are scattered across

multiple teams with little consolidation or centralized access. This creates

significant duplicity of effort and poses challenges to develop a best in class IT

service delivery experience.

EGR-2015-4-R-1387




Impact of Suboptimal IT Service Delivery

It is stating the obvious that poor and suboptimal IT service delivery causes

value erosion, produces poor business results, and increases the business-IT

disconnect. In these times of technology-led differentiation and rapid

innovation, suboptimal IT service delivery can limit the capability of a business

to differentiate and grow.

Moreover, as businesses drift further apart from IT-driven objectives, new

funding for the IT service organization gets negatively impacted. This further

exacerbates the challenges, as the agenda of the IT service organization

becomes cost containment versus business enablement. Suboptimal IT service

delivery results in budget overruns and poor quality of business offerings. The

business misses growth opportunities due to delayed timelines. It not only results

in reduced profitability for the business but also creates significant reputation

risk as shown in Exhibit 2.

Cost overrun

Most IT service delivery resources are engaged in tasks that consume significant

time, however, create limited business value. This increases the cost of IT service

delivery as more resources are deployed than necessary. Senior leadership

bandwidth is consumed in operational tasks for managing manual processes

and their outcomes. Cost of communication and collaboration increases in the

absence of a centralized platform. Everest Group research indicates that

enterprises with suboptimal IT service delivery teams overspend by 25-35% in

delivering the needed services.

Organizations typically lack an end-to-end view of their IT service landscape

that result in islands of costs. Most business critical projects (e.g., legacy

application transformation) underestimate the cost drivers as they leverage

inadequate tools that can comprehensively assist in this process.

Delayed timelines

A suboptimal IT service delivery impacts the agility of a business to respond to

market demands. Timelines of projects are repeatedly missed due to erroneous

effort estimation, incorrect requirements gathering, poor development activities,

and multiple ad-hoc manual interventions. For example, in legacy application

transformation this is visible in the limited understanding of old technologies,

EGR-2015-4-R-1387

Business impact of a suboptimal

IT service delivery

E X H I B I T 2


Cost overruns

Delayed

timelines

Poor quality

Business-IT

disconnect

Missed growth

opportunities

Diminished

profitabilityReputation risk

Sustainability

challenges

Result of

suboptimal IT

service delivery

Business impact



EGR-2015-4-R-1387


disproportionate effort to achieve data quality, and scattered documentation.

Consequently, enterprises spend 30-50% more time in delivering the required IT

services due to disjointed service delivery practices. The business lacks agility and

becomes “late to market” as critical initiatives are delayed. People responsible

for differentiated IT services consume inordinate amount of time and resources

due to lack of enabling tools. The business is unable to cater to rapidly changing

market expectations, resulting in missed opportunities for growth.

Poor quality

Poor IT service delivery results in poor quality of the end product. A half-baked

product or service can be detrimental to the brand image of an organization. As

the overall IT service delivery is compromised at different junctures (e.g.,incomplete requirements, poor coding practice, and incomplete QA), the quality

suffers.

Our research suggests that enterprises are unable to detect and address 30-50%

of the functional and non-functional defects of the IT systems introduced during

the requirements and design phase. These have significant quality and costimplications once discovered downstream (i.e., technical debt). These inferior

products negatively impact the sustainability of the business. Moreover, as IT

services become unreliable there are cascading challenges for the business to

launch newer offerings or differentiate.

Business-IT disconnect

All of the outcomes of suboptimal IT service delivery cited above impact the

relationship between business and IT. This disconnect severely impacts the

funding for new initiatives as well as the credibility of the IT organization. ShadowIT functions within the business tap into alternate budget pools to enable

functionalities that they require but do not trust enterprise IT to deliver.

Consequently, IT is often viewed as a bottleneck in achieving business objectives

making senior business leadership question the credibility and value of the IT

organization beyond “keeping the lights on”.

Many enterprises, such as Kodak and Borders, became extinct as the business

could not evolve and respond adequately to the technology disruptions. We

believe it is critically important for enterprises to embrace IT service delivery

optimization. A suboptimal IT service delivery construct can hasten theirrelevance and extinction of an enterprise.




Leveraging Technology to Optimize IT Service Delivery

Business-IT misalignment has been studied extensively and enterprises have

adopted various strategies to bridge this gap. Despite a strong focus on ITSM

processes, this disconnect is witnessed across enterprises – large and small,

alike. Organizations end up managing and creating “blind process adherence”

for inherently inefficient and suboptimal IT service delivery.

Most enterprises, while undertaking initiatives to optimize IT service delivery,

typically default to a “big bang” approach of business process transformation.

Though the aspirations are commendable, real execution witnesses significant

challenges. Therefore, the success rate of these initiatives is uncertain despite

massive investments and risks to service disruption. Other initiatives to optimize

IT service delivery typically include investing in the skills of resources and

incentive realignment. These approaches have demonstrated mixed results with

limited consistency across enterprises.

The most surprising aspect across enterprises regarding their initiatives to

optimize IT service delivery, is the lack of focus on leveraging technology

solutions as analyzed in Exhibit 3. Everest Group’s analysis reveals a surprisingly

low adoption of technology-driven initiatives to improve IT service delivery,

despite the achievable impact on end-outcomes.

Though enterprises deploy multiple fragmented tools to achieve modular tasks

(e.g., smoke testing, code conversion, performance analysis, disaster recovery,

and server patching), very few leverage technology consistently and holistically

across the SDLC and post production support processes.

Our research and experience causes us to contend that the challenges

confronting modern IT organizations cannot be addressed meaningfully by

traditional methods of process reengineering, skills development, and incentive

realignment. With agile delivery becoming mainstream and traditional models

still continuing strong, enterprises require technology-enabled transformational

initiatives to optimize IT service delivery.

EGR-2015-4-R-1387

Approaches to optimize IT

service delivery and their

adoption

E X H I B I T 3


Focus

Process

reengineering

Enterprises have a hard-wired

assumption regarding the bene-

fits of process reengineering

and transformation

Technology-driven initiatives

are surprisingly ignored,

though they can have the

maximum impact on

optimizing IT service delivery

Investing in skills and aligning

IT incentives have displayed

mixed and inconsistent results

IT skill

development

Organizational

resistance

Risk of service

disruption

IT incentive

alignment

Technology-

driven initiatives

Assurance

of outcome

Technology, through tools and

other assets, is increasingly

playing a critical role in next-

generation IT service delivery

eliminating waste, improving

user experience, and aligning IT

service delivery with overall

business objectives.

– Peter Bendor-Samuel, Founder

and CEO, Everest Group

“

“




Adopting Technology Solutions Across the SDLC

Most enterprises invest a fortune in improving IT service delivery. There are

numerous commercial software available that focus on streamlining and

optimizing “sub processes” within the SDLC. However, most of these disjointed

tools serve a specific function and operate in their own silos. These silos prevent

traceability across design, development, QA, and support processes, which in

turn impact the cost of operations, project timelines, and accountability.

Everest Group’s research reveals that enterprises do recognize the value of

technology-led IT service delivery optimization initiatives. However, they

erroneously believe that investing in point solutions and focusing on specific

tasks can optimize IT services. Exhibit 4 depicts that to fundamentally optimize

IT service delivery, enterprises must necessarily invest in technology-driven

initiatives across the SDLC processes and post production support.

For example, code reuse can save 25-35% of effort of developers. Further, a

strong focus on code quality during “build and design” leveraging code

diagnostic tools, can reduce approximately 30% of application tickets during

production1. Collectively, these initiatives result in over 20% productivity

improvements in activities such as application maintenance whenever tools are

holistically leveraged across the SDLC.

For enterprises to realize the full value of IT service delivery optimization

initiatives, these technology solutions need to enable the following changes that

are meaningful yet manageable:

EGR-2015-4-R-1387

Adopting technology-led IT

service delivery optimization

across SDLC

E X H I B I T 4


Ro

le o

f te

ch

no

log

y s

olu

tio

ns

Application lifecycle

Requirements

and design

Analyze and plan

Build and design

Test and validate

Implement and

maintain

“Code once” deploy anywhere

Prototyping and “codeless” development

Faster development and support for

agile delivery

Service level assurance

Adherence to industry frameworks (e.g., ITIL)

“Zero” day transition and knowledge digitization

Centralized storage and management of requirements

Detect gaps early and integrate with other tools

Enhance cross-team collaboration

Enable test data creation and

management

Continuous integration and

testing

Accountability by event tracing

1 In search of ADM productivity – You have Got to Start Somewhere

https://research.everestgrp.com/Product/EGR-2014-4-R-1100/In-Search-of-ADM-Productivity



r e s e a r c h . e v e r e s t g r p . c o m 1 0

Process digitization and automation

Enterprises need to move away from over reliance on human intervention and

skills of individuals. Significant process documentation, team knowledge,

configuration parameters, and related IT service delivery aspects are leveraged

by “memory”, rather than through a structured approach. A technology-driven

IT service delivery paradigm must digitize as many processes as possible, to

limit human intervention and error.

Different tasks need to be broken down into modules that can be industrialized,

automated, and integrated to perform operations. For example, tasks such as

test data generation, data masking, and collating events from multiple

repositories, should require minimum human intervention. The platform should

enable capturing and benchmarking of requirements. It should also automate

correlation of events and standardization of processes. There must be defined

process flows to adhere to for delivering optimized IT services.

Data and analytics

Enterprises have amassed colossal amounts of data across their IT

environments. All the way from configuration data, application logs, events,

incidents, defects, embedded business rules, and process flows, enterprises

have vast repositories of data. Moreover, legacy systems accumulate precious

data that can be effectively leveraged for transformational objectives. Any

technology-driven IT service delivery optimization initiative must encompass

fact-based data-driven analysis of applications and infrastructure.

The solution must ensure data relevancy, consistency, and accuracy for

business. This data must provide complete insights into the application and

infrastructure landscape for the best decision making. The fundamental meta-

data across systems must be collated and enhanced. For example, rather than

relying on extensive human effort during an application rationalization or

consolidation exercise, technology-driven initiatives must automatically extract

and gather relevant application metrics (e.g., configuration, business rules).

Collaboration and process adherence

Enterprises have a plethora of stand-alone and siloed tools for tasks such as

project management and service governance. However, maximum focus is on

production support and IT operations. There is limited support for different

SDLC activities, resulting in poor process adherence. IT support is generally

centralized, whereas new projects reside with business and, therefore, are

scattered. There is little collaboration to improve IT services right at the

inception.

Technology-driven IT service delivery optimization should embed intelligence

beyond post production support and encompass the entire SDLC value-chain

(e.g., design, development, QA, and service transition). It should provide

EGR-2015-4-R-1387




reusable components and modules to improve productivity and ensure

consistent practices in code development and QA. Collaboration must be

digitized to enable dissemination of best practices and seamless

communication between developers, QA, sponsors, and project managers.

Global system repositories

Technology platforms need to aggregate the fragmented system information

across the enterprise. These platforms should provide an easy mechanism to

store, retrieve, and update system-related data. Scattered information prohibits

transformation of legacy systems, hinders business agility, and increases cost of

operations. Optimized IT service delivery must rely on a consistent global

repository of meta-data related to different applications and systems that

augments the Configuration Management Database (CMDB).

This repository should be easily accessible for developers and support engineers

to quickly meet changing business requirements. Moreover, the technology

solution should enable consistent view and updated system documentation to

deliver optimized IT services (e.g., migration, effort estimation, and continuous

improvement).

Value and Key Success Factors – Technology-led IT ServiceDelivery Optimization

As enterprises seek to technology-led optimization of IT service delivery they

need to focus on tangible benefits from these initiatives. Everest Group’s

research indicates that technology solutions can optimize various processes

within the SDLC. End-to-end integrated technology solutions can significantly

enhance quality of business offerings. These solutions can detect problems at

an early stage, reducing the downstream cost of rework. Moreover, they

automate and digitize manual processes improving productivity and time to

market.

Exhibit 5 summarizes the impact of technology solutions on driving IT service

delivery optimization initiatives and the resultant business value generated.

Technology-led IT service delivery optimization inculcates and encourages a

culture of collaboration and data-driven IT services. The focus shifts from stand-

alone KPI management to application-centric service delivery that maps to

business outcomes. The technology solutions enable integrated SLA governance

and an enterprise-wide view of IT services.

EGR-2015-4-R-1387

CIO’s are increasingly looking to

simplify their IT portfolio and

increase the return on investment

for their technology decisions.

Key to making this happen is

innovation so that the service

delivery process is standardized,

helping reduce customer costs

while delivering a high quality

service.

– Allen Brown, CEO and

President, The Open Group

“

“




However, for this to succeed, organizations need a plan of action that does not

introduce overwhelming changes to the overall environment. These initiatives

should not be perceived as unmanageable by the stakeholders. Enterprises

deploying technology solutions to optimize IT service delivery need to

incorporate the vision of “simplification” at the core of their strategy.

Though the idea of process reengineering is attractive, it is not always the best

suited mechanism to optimize IT service delivery. Optimization initiatives should

ideally be run in the “background” without requiring significant change

management. In our experience, most well intentioned “big bang” optimization

initiatives introduce unmanageable and unwarranted changes that result in

failure. We believe that most business value resides in automating and digitizing

manual processes, rather than in defaulting on process reengineering.

The success of technology-led IT service delivery optimization initiatives rests on

five major pillars as summarized in Exhibit 6.

Most IT-related initiatives require executive championship and commitment.

However, optimizing IT service delivery is successful only when these initiatives

also have the support of and buy-in from the line managers. Thrusting an

initiative on them due to “organizational mandate” is unlikely to deliver

intended outcomes.

EGR-2015-4-R-1387

Business value from optimizing

IT service delivery

E X H I B I T 5


Key success factors in optimizing

IT service delivery

E X H I B I T 6


Responsiveness to

market demand

Improved operational

efficiency

Enhanced customer

experience

New avenues for

growth

Business value

Design and

developmentImplementation

Management and

supportTransformation

Reusable

components

Enable “low skill”

development

Optimized testing

Knowledge

management and

transition

Automated

deployments

System data stores

and mappings

Integrated

governance and

collaboration

Data management

Program

management

Data-driven

transformation

Factual application

and systems

analysis

Quick turnaround

and transition

Impact of technology

Put “IT simplification” as the core focus of optimization initiatives

Avoid overwhelming and unwarranted changes

Ensure coverage across SDLC processes

Get executive and line manager buy-in

Plan and mitigate potential IT service disruption

Ke

y s

uc

ce

ss

fac

tors

for o

ptim

izin

g IT

se

rvic

e d

eliv

ery

lev

era

gin

g te

ch

no

log

y




Case Study: Woolworths Limited

Client overview

Founded in 1924, Woolworths is the largest supermarket and grocery chain in

Australia, with over 198,000 employees, serving more than 28 million

customers, and generating ~US$54 billion in revenue.

Woolworths has more than 3,000 stores across Australia and New Zealand

spanning food, petrol, liquor, general merchandise, and home improvement

products.

Context and background

Technology plays a key role in Woolworths’ business given its scale and the

nature of the retail industry.

Woolworths’ Quality Assurance (QA) environment consists of multiple

applications being tested by over 200 professionals (internal and service

providers). At any given instance, the QA organization runs ~50 projects of

different sizes across functional, performance, security, and integration testing.

Woolworths has been working with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for over ten

years and TCS is considered as a strategic partner by Woolworths, especially in

the QA domain.

The challenges

Woolworths QA processes, though efficient, suffered from lack of

standardization and integrated workflows. Woolworths realized that despite its

process efficiencies, broader QA management had room for improvements.

For example, on various occasions, the provisioned test environment differed

from requirements and the QA team began every project “new” with limited

leverage from earlier efforts. The QA organization was more focused on testing

than on end-to-end quality assurance. This resulted in delays in service delivery

to the business, prolonged time-to-market, and significant demands on time

and resources during QA.

The solution

Woolworths earlier relied on an industry point solution for managing its QA

processes. However, it realized the value of a platform integrated with broader

IT services and replaced the point solution with TCS MasterCraft Application

Lifecycle Manager (ALM).

TCS MasterCraft portfolio consists of 30 technology products across eight

suites, focusing on software automation tools and platforms to optimize and

EGR-2015-4-R-1387

Lack of process standardization,

focus on “testing” than QA, and

business frustration due to long

testing cycles were the key

challenges.




enhance different SDLC processes such as application development, testing,

data management, legacy transformation, and IT service management.

The results

TCS led the change management, in close collaboration with Woolworths’ QA

organization, for deploying TCS MasterCraft Application Lifecycle Manager. The

solution was deployed in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model with TCS

hosting it.

A rigorous functional, performance, and integration testing of the platform

(e.g., data exchange with on-premise systems, security concerns, and feature

richness) provided comfort to Woolworths regarding the suitability of the SaaS

solution. Further, the SaaS model allowed Woolworths to focus on business

issues versus managing the underlying infrastructure.

Given that the QA management platform is the “nerve center” for the entire

QA organization, the deployment was performed in phases where dedicated

TCS engineers provided live demo, deployment, customization, and support to

Woolworths.

Woolworths unlocked value in its QA process by deploying the TCS MasterCraft

Application Lifecycle Manager. Apart from the fact that it is SaaS delivered,

resulting in cost savings on infrastructure and support, the solution offered

useful feature sets and workflows. Some of the key benefits derived till date

include:

a) Improved time-to-market: In the legacy environment, Woolworths witnessed

challenges in accessing and managing defects. This resulted in business

frustration and longer time-to-market. Post transition, Woolworths received

feature rich capabilities for effective QA management, resulting in quicker

and streamlined services delivered to the business

b) Reduced governance overheads: Woolworths believe that TCS MasterCraft

ALM offers improved and integrated workflows for QA resources to create

and access QA-related data and information. These workflows assist in

assigning and tracking QA-related responsibilities resulting in efficient

operations, limited downtime, and reduced governance efforts and costs

c) Unified QA view due to improved reporting: Woolworths leverages the

improved reporting functionality of the platform that assists in making

correct decisions aligned to the business objectives. This has increased QA

productivity, created a unified view, and reduced costs

d) Comprehensive QA assuring business satisfaction: Unlike in the legacy

environment, QA resources do not spend an inordinate amount of time in

ensuring scope adherence, as the platform readily provides needed

information. Moreover, various aspects of QA processes are well captured

EGR-2015-4-R-1387

TCS MasterCraft ALM has good

reporting functions, enhanced

feature sets, and integrated

workflows that help us in

optimizing QA activities.

– Richard Lewis, QA Manager,

Woolworths Limited

“

“




and accountability is transparent. This assists in increasing focus on core QA

tasks, expanding coverage, and ensuring better quality of service delivered to

the business

Lessons learned

Some of the key lessons learnt by Woolworths were:

a) Have a plan: Woolworths realized that any critical platform that is deployed for

the long term needs to undergo structured implementation. Woolworths and

TCS jointly developed an action plan for the entire adoption journey. This

ensured that the platform did not disrupt QA operations and was incorporated

with limited hindrances

b) Do not disrupt operations: Woolworths and TCS collaborated to ensure that

there was minimal process transformation required. This is imperative to avoid

large scale change management and QA disruption. Any process change, if

required, was preceded by a detailed analysis and a strategy for subsequent

change management

c) Make users aware: Woolworths realized that simply deploying a different QA

management platform will not create business value unless the end-users are

made aware of its benefits. A structured program was devised to ensure that

users are systematically made aware of TCS MasterCraft to extract maximum

value from the platform

d) “Right skill” the resources: The QA resources were trained on the additional

features of TCS MasterCraft. This “upskilling” was required to derive the best

value out of a new platform. Unless the end-users were skilled enough to work

on the available enhanced functionality they could not add business value

e) Value of platform enhanced by IT services: QA platforms can provide

enhanced business value when augmented with IT services. Though not a

prerequisite, platform providers need to offer IT services beyond typical

deployments. There needs to be a “handholding” process and downstream

support where clients are provided all the enabling services

Woolworths is contemplating extending and adding similar functionality to

different parts of the IT organization, beyond the QA function. The company

has achieved success in deploying a large-scale platform at a fairly

comfortable pace with limited downtime and business disruption. It would like

to leverage this experience further in deploying other platforms and products.

This exercise has provided Woolworths with significant “best practices” in

platform selection, end-user awareness, and making the overall program a

success. These are valuable lessons and will offer great help in the future

across other programs

EGR-2015-4-R-1387




Conclusion

The rapid disruption in technology, importance of maintaining & transforming

existing systems, and aligning IT to business objectives requires enterprises to

reinvent their IT service delivery.

We believe right technology solutions deployed and integrated across different

sub-processes across the SDLC can deliver significant value. However, these

technology solutions need to be augmented with long term changes across

different dimensions as shown in the Exhibit 7 below.

Technology solutions can indeed play a significant part in optimizing IT service

delivery. These solutions can assist in the industrialization, digitization, and

automation of various processes. These automated processes are modular and

can adhere to best practices and industry frameworks, creating greater

accountability and transparency while improving business reliance and

confidence of the business on the IT organization.

These technology solutions should provide measurable and quantifiable Return

on Investments (ROI) and can be supported by other long term initiatives (e.g.,

cultural change, delivery organization design, metrics strategy, and IT-business

KPI mapping). Moreover, they can also expose the gaps across IT service

delivery processes and help enterprises address these adequately in a timely

manner.

However, for this to happen, enterprises need to rethink their tools strategy,

refocusing across SDLC, rather than only on point support. They need to

inculcate a culture of assessing the entire application lifecycle end-to-end,

EGR-2015-4-R-1387

IT service delivery optimization

continuum

E X H I B I T 7


Delivery model

Level 1: Ad-hoc Level 2: Reactive Level 3: Optimized

Digitization, industrializa-

tion, and automation are

the core focus

Strong cross-team

collaboration and

knowledge management

End-to-end application

lifecycle management

aligned to industry best

practices

Sporadic industrialization

and automation

Little cross-team

collaboration and

knowledge dissemination

Reactive and over

focused on IT support

with misaligned practices

Over reliant on manual

effort and ad-hoc

interventions

Limited collaboration

even within teams

IT service delivery

focused on surviving the

day

Integrated and cost

effective tools strategy

Tools deployed across

SDLC

Well-defined business

case and outcome linked

to tools adoption

Fragmented and

expensive tool ecosystem

Tools leveraged in “team

island”

Limited focus on

estimating business ROI

Limited understanding

and adoption of tools

No clear tool strategy or

vision

Little tangible business

impact

Application-centric

delivery

Business-aligned SLAs

Metrics focused on Total

Cost of Ownership (TCO)

Tower-focused SLAs with

limited business

alignment

Unstructured IT-aligned

metrics and measurement

Project-based metrics

with limited portfolio

perspective

Incomplete and

inconsistent definition and

assessment

End-to-end ownership of

technology and business

process

Seamless internal and

third-party vendor

management

Segmented by complexity

and business process

Decentralized with

multiple vendors and

shared services

Limited overarching

design

Poor accountability

across technology and

processes

Technology

solution

Organization

design

Metrics and

SLAs




rather than in the silos. The focus needs to shift away from IT-aligned KPIs to

business outcomes. This will be possible when these tools can assist in an

application-centric IT service delivery that can support business objectives.

Leveraged correctly, technology can make IT service delivery optimization a

reality. The upside is too big to ignore, and the downside, well, it is outright

scary!

EGR-2015-4-R-1387




About Everest Group

Everest Group is an advisor to business leaders on next generation global

services with a worldwide reputation for helping Global 1000 firms dramatically

improve their performance by optimizing their back- and middle-office business

services. With a fact-based approach driving outcomes, Everest Group counsels

organizations with complex challenges related to the use and delivery of global

services in their pursuits to balance short-term needs with long-term goals.

Through its practical consulting, original research and industry resource

services, Everest Group helps clients maximize value from delivery strategies,

talent and sourcing models, technologies and management approaches.

Established in 1991, Everest Group serves users of global services, providers of

services, country organizations, and private equity firms, in six continents across

all industry categories. For more information, please visit www.everestgrp.com

and research.everestgrp.com.

EGR-2015-4-R-1387

For more information about Everest Group, please contact:

+1-214-451-3110

[email protected]

For more information about this topic please contact the author(s):

Jimit Arora, Vice President

[email protected]

Yugal Joshi, Practice Director

[email protected]



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