Developing software for software-defined products is a complex endeavor. Software bugs cost time and money. Developers who are busy with rework get stressed and dissatisfied. Managing and improving the delivery of quality software in a sustainable way allows balancing the quality of the software with the well-being of the developers. The key to making effective changes is having the data and insights into the root causes that are affecting the software production processes.Â
Which Metrics Solution Best Empowers Software Delivery Improvement?
Organizations have different approaches available to get insights into their software production processes and improve their software delivery. One option is to rely on metrics in the ticketing and code repository platforms. These metrics are readily available but provide siloed data and little insight into the whole software delivery lifecycle. Another option is to use an off-the-shelf metrics solution. These services offer a deeper analysis but only from a pre-determined perspective, often confounding delivery metrics with team performance and code metrics, while only available as SaaS and thus cannot be customized. A third option is to custom-build a metrics solution but requirements are often unclear from the beginning and it takes a long time until relevant insights become available. Finally, companies can work with executive consultancy to get help with large-scale transformation but these often lack the foresight and metrics to measure the result of those costly changes.
What organizations need is a metrics solution that already provides insights out-of-the-box for the Software Delivery Life Cycle, can be owned by the organization, and customized to the specific needs. This solution needs to be paired with expert guidance on drawing meaningful insights and conclusions from the data. In this blog post, we introduce a new service by Bitergia and Toscalix that helps companies with just this.
The solution: Delivery Performance Analytics
Delivery Performance Analytics is a consulting service dedicated to continuously enhancing how organizations sustainably deliver better software-defined products faster, while increasing the workforce’s well-being, combining a data analytics approach with a proficient multidisciplinary consulting team.
To make it happen, we started collaborating with Agustin Benito Bethencourt from Toscalix Consulting, in the past years we have worked together on different occasions and have been talking about doing something like this for quite some time now. Now, we’re proud to announce our new packaged service, Delivery Performance Analytics.
This service is special in many ways. We have a lot of experience and knowledge that makes us good at helping companies that make complex software-defined products. We use advanced data analysis to help these companies improve how they deliver their products. This makes them faster and more stable while also making sure their employees are happy.
Here are the two main ideas that guide us in how we create and use Delivery Performance Analytics:
- Human-Centric. Putting People First. When it comes to making software and handling its processes and data, it’s easy to focus only on the technical stuff. But really, it’s all about the people involved. Making things better for the company and how it works should also make sure that the people working there feel good and are doing well.
- Open Source is a Big Deal for Us. Open Source isn’t just something we like. Everything we do, from the tools we use to how we advise, and even the reports we make, is set up so that our customers have complete control. We don’t lock anyone into using specific tools or services. It’s all about letting our customers decide how they want to manage their data and strategies without any restrictions from us.
Delivery Performance Analytics provides advanced data analytics to sustainably ship better software-defined products faster
As software-defined products become more complex, being innovative becomes important. Companies also realize they need to bring their products to market faster. Just controlling the cost of making things isn’t enough; they also need to make the production process much better. To deal with this challenge, there are a few important things: using automation, making tools that can change as needed, using agile methods, making hardware testing better… and using advanced data analysis all through the production process.
Read more in Agustin’s blog post: Delivery Performance Analytics: Advanced data analytics to sustainably ship better software-defined products faster
Delivery Performance Analytics improves sustainable software delivery and workforce well-being
Bitergia offers Delivery Performance Analytics services structured in five different sequential services to cover the types of Data Analytics.
This setup ensures that we process all the input data, set up initial visualizations, and ensure a shared understanding between our team and the customer about the delivery system being assessed. We compare what we already know with what the data shows us. By working together, we can delve deeper, uncover important insights, and then apply and assess solutions or actions to make things better.
The service offering starter point is structured in three stages, a product deployment, a packaged service, and a customized consultancy service:
1. Bitergia Analytics Platform
The first stage is product deployment to get metrics. Use Bitergia Analytics Platform as a tool and work with the consultants to analyze the data:
- Embrace the tool so your data is imported into Bitergia Analytics
- Process your data to bring visibility first, transparency later, and finally comprehensibility to your software delivery lifecycle
2. Delivery Consulting
The second stage is a packaged service for descriptive analytics. Describe your environment and product elements so Bitergia consultants and you can perform more complex analysis. Become able to take ownership of Bitergia Analytics Platform and your data analytics strategy
- Gain an end-to-end view of the delivery process, stakeholders’ actions, and key product elements
- View historical information about key events and actions to see valuable insights about your software delivery lifecycle
3. Premium Consulting
The third stage is a customized consultancy service for diagnostic analytics. Discover improvements based on the previous diagnosis. Obtain the capabilities to execute a data-driven improvement process where experiments are designed, executed, and their impact evaluated
- Identify potential risks, symptoms, and root causes of performance inefficiencies
- Embrace continuous improvement guided by metrics
Delivery Performance Analytics comes with zero vendor lock-in, offering many ways to customize the solution
Delivery Performance Analytics operates on open source principles, primarily using the Bitergia Analytics Platform to collect, process, and present information from various data sources. The entire platform is open source, allowing customers to gradually gain full control over the tool, processed data, visualization methods, insights generation, and all other aspects of the service.
The consultancy team maintains transparent communication with customers throughout the service, fostering collaboration. The goal extends beyond enhancing data analytics capabilities; it aims to instill a cultural shift towards making informed decisions based on data at every organizational level. Ultimately, the Delivery Performance Analytics service ensures zero vendor lock-in, empowering customers to manage and utilize the service independently.
Discover the dynamic potential of Delivery Performance Analytics
Our service is tailored to enhance your software delivery while prioritizing your team’s welfare. By merging advanced data analytics with diverse expertise, we enable faster, more stable software development.
With Delivery Performance Analytics, we prioritize people and open source values. Our structured approach, from deploying the Bitergia Analytics Platform to customized consultancy, ensures a deep understanding of your systems.Â
Let’s collaborate, unravel meaningful insights from your data, and implement solutions for an efficient and rewarding work environment. Experience the transformative power of our service.
Contact us today to explore how Delivery Performance Analytics can elevate your delivery performance and empower your data-driven decision-making!
