Inside Fintech - Getting your technology to market fast!
Over the last 20 years I've been involved with a number of fast-growing technology companies. Engagements have ranged from delivering new products to market and supporting divestments and mergers to dealing with the odd firestorm. In this time, I’ve helped several CEOs and their senior management teams get to market, fast. I’m glad to say many of these people are good friends of mine today.
Recently I was discussing a new project with a client and the COO asked me, “what are the most-asked questions when the pressure is on?” It sparked me to write this piece, which includes five things to stop these questions from ever being asked in the first place.
Most of us will recognise the steering committees or meetings with the CEO, board and investors that result in loss of confidence in the ability of technology to deliver an outcome. Similarly, the feelings that come with the dreaded three questions:
“Why are we late?“
“Why are you over budget?”
“Why can you not fix it before go live?”
On their own they are perfectly reasonable questions for senior leadership to ask. But unfortunately, they are complex questions to answer with more than 50 shades of grey. So, it would appear people have a choice. There is the usual scrabbling around with finances, metrics and tangible progress reports to justify spend, time and quality-related issues. Followed by the political dance of how they will be fixed if you're given more funding. Only to find your numbers are wrong and one or two of the sharp-minded individuals in the room notice, leading to a scramble to recover after presenting inaccurate information. Or alternatively you can choose to avoid putting yourself in this position to start with. Which do you prefer? Answers on a postcard please!
Too good to be true
The important thing to remember is there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to building technology. Whatever people tell you, if it sounds too good to be true it usually is. There is a tendency to take statements like “out of the box” or “fully integrated” at face value. In reality, do your due diligence and research, speak to clients and customers who have successfully implemented solutions and ask the difficult questions. Make sure vendors can back up their claims
Offshoring can cost you more
When it comes to cost management, the immediate reaction of most companies is to offshore development and technology without really understanding the true cost. We have spent the past ten years being asked to provide onshore support to offshore providers. In some cases this has simply involved providing a localised management wrapper, in other cases we have had to bolster delivery capability to maintain a critical timeline. The appeal of a heavily discounted offshore day rate can quickly be offset by additional spend from refactoring and late delivery – particularly without the right controls in place. Before you know it you are over-budget or worse still, at risk of not delivering. Think through your vendor strategy as offshoring without the right controls in place will cost you more than you think.
Dealing with contracts
At the risk of stating the obvious, contracts ensure both parties understand exactly what is being asked of each other and more importantly what will be delivered. Unfortunately, as projects progress -thinking changes. As these changes manifest, it is not uncommon for the contract construct to no longer work as envisaged. Inevitably this causes problems that range from scope creep, inability to manage change cost-effectively or measure vendor performance, and delivery slippage. Investing the right time and expertise in the contract definition stage is essential. For example, putting in agreed fix-times for bugs in test not just production can reap dividends during delivery – and perhaps surprisingly not just for the client. The point of a vendor-client relationship is that both parties win, with the fate of each often tied together. Agree structured quality, time and cost-based KPI’s and collaborate rather than hiding behind contracts.
Lasagne not spaghetti – Be consistent
Most mid to large-size projects resemble spaghetti with seemingly straightforward matters proving to be unexpectedly complex and chaotic. A binary outcome is often determined by many variables which are difficult to capture let alone measure. A myriad of reasons can be at play, which generally start to unravel when the hard work of setting up the delivery organisation is done piecemeal. When the gaps emerge, tactical sticky plasters are put over the holes with varying success. The impact is then compounded by changing management structures, changing priorities and firefighting as new problems and challenges arise.
Instead consistency should be the goal, with predicable layers across the organisation – lasagne if you will. Consistency and predictability enables you to demonstrate how outcomes will be delivered to stakeholders at a much lower overhead in terms of time, cost and political capital. There are bound to be conflicting opinions, decisions, estimates, costs and business challenges, but ultimately, it's about building a consistent organisation that is flexible and constant throughout.
Automate
Achieving repeatable outcomes at speed is the bedrock of delivering software in today’s world. Automation needs to be at the heart of your vendor and delivery model to provide you with repeatable, fast and high-quality outcomes. Invest in quality engineering up front, this will mean about 15% of your budget being spent in the first third of your project on quality-related activities to enable automation to be scalable and repeatable. In essence It pays to get it right first time.
How can we help?
Here at Dragonfly we've taken everything we've learnt over the last ten years to help companies get their technology to market, fast! We remove or reduce technology-delivery costs by providing an out-of-the-box scalable solution that uses a combination of automation, advanced technology analytics and on-demand consulting to guarantee delivery. We provide a blueprint that places automation at the heart of delivery. This enables us to reduce delivery times significantly, improve productivity and provide predictable business outcomes.
Article written by Dan Hooper, CEO of Dragonfly
