All say R O aye
One of the key phrases being used in software delivery is return on investment (ROI) and this is particularly true in the current cost sensitive environment. Lean methods of delivery (i.e. ‘agile’ methodologies) are therefore an attractive proposition for both providers and customers as both strive for business value as early as possible within the project delivery cycle. Suppliers tend to focus on early delivery to engender confidence and to show tangible progress, while customers tend to want to see their investment realised as early as possible.
Often business value is only measured in economic terms, for instance how much a software investment adds to an organisation’s value, or for its Net Present Value or rate of investment return. However, benefit often expands beyond this into less quantifiable areas such as getting a competitive edge, being innovative, aligning IT to processes or gaining confidence among sector peers. It is the ambition of software suppliers to satisfy the criteria of business value, to satisfy stakeholders, and to cement confidence between supplier and customer as it is often central to providing a successful software delivery.
The agile manifesto aims to ‘satisfy the customers through early and continuous delivery of valuable software’. To satisfy this aim, agile techniques focus on autonomous software features in the form of user stories. These features have been discussed with the customer to establish business value and are then prioritised for delivery. The stories are organised into short increments (iterations) which are themselves grouped together to form releases of the software. Releases are the units of delivery described by the agile manifesto, and are planned to align with the customer’s business case. The process of delivering high value is maintained throughout the delivery cycle via a process of constant review and reprioritisation, ensuring that any changes to the business case are realised as early as possible.
The software release strategy is therefore the key to ROI as, with careful planning, an organisation should begin to see a financial return for their initial investment long before the final release.
However, there are the additional gains of:
• having something tangible earlier in the project, as deployed software helps to instil confidence among a community of users;
• end users having time to adapt to change;
• evaluating process change earlier;
• end users have the opportunity to contribute to future releases in advance of project completion.
Agile processes focus the stakeholders on delivering high value from the outset. It does however, require small changes to the way we think about software, away from the monolithic approach of deliver once, toward a more progressive incremental delivery model that provides value early. By ensuring that business value and priority is discussed often, organisations and software suppliers can achieve greater unity by focusing on common goals and an early ROI.
Andy Rumfitt
