1. Create a Horizontally Optimized SDLC to Better Meet Business Demands
Local optimization isn’t the answer – you must examine the entire SDLC.
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2. ANALYST PERSPECTIVE
What are our analysts saying about the Software Development Lifecycle?
Many software development teams focus on continual improvement for their particular area. Unfortunately, this approach to local optimization can unknowingly disrupt the overall SDLC process – from requirements to release – of producing quality software.
So in trying to get better locally, we are actually getting worse overall.
What we need is a framework that properly balances local optimizations and validates against the overall SDLC process.
Kyle Lubieniecki
Consulting Analyst
Info-Tech Research Group

3. Our understanding of the problem
Application development directors looking to optimize their Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC).
Team leads who want to optimize processes within their respective subject areas.
SDLC process owners who want to improve the core process of software development.
Use an optimization framework that accounts for local and overall optimization.
Discuss any local optimizations in progress or being planned by team leads.
Communicate across teams for the benefit of everyone involved in the SDLC.
CIOs who want a streamlined SDLC process.
Business stakeholders who want to improve the final product for their end users.
Understand how the improvements will be more efficient and lead to better quality.
Realize what gaps exist in the SDLC and provide leadership and guidance to address those needs.

4. Executive Summary
The pressure on development teams to produce high-quality applications has never been higher.
However, software development teams are struggling to release on time and within budget due to ineffective processes.
Optimizing without looking at the big picture can make you worse overall. The SDLC must be optimized in its entirety to ensure traceability across the process.
Separate process from framework. You don’t need to “Go Agile” or follow other industry jargon to effectively optimize your SDLC.
SDLC process improvement is ongoing. Start with your team’s current capabilities and optimize. You should set expectations that new SDLC improvements will always come in the future.
Teams do not understand the overall process or the process itself is flawed, making traceability hard to achieve.
Teams are not set up for strong communication and interoperability.
Each team claims to be optimized yet the final deliverable doesn’t reflect the expected quality.
While teams are used to optimizing their own respective areas of responsibility, there is lack of clarity on the overall core SDLC process.
Use a systematic framework to drive effective local optimizations as potential initiatives for overall SDLC optimization.
Prioritize those initiatives that will aid in optimizing the overall core SDLC process.
Create the necessary governance and control structures to sustain the changes.
Ensure traceability so that each proposed change is examined for its impact across the full SDLC.

5. TYPICAL ISSUES IN A NON-OPTIMIZED SDLC
Think of your SDLC as a critical process for achieving business objectives
WHAT IS THE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFECYCLE (SDLC)?
SDLC is a process that involves 5 key activities: requirements gathering, design, development, testing, and deployment. An SDLC process provides consistency during software development – and this consistency enables proper planning, coordination, and measurement in producing quality software.
Since it is a process, your SDLC must be continually optimized; there will always be room for improvement. As an example, techniques like Waterfall control points and Agile scrum emerged as ways of optimizing the SDLC, based in part on varying levels of business requirements stability.
TYPICAL ISSUES IN A NON-OPTIMIZED SDLC
An optimized SDLC will:
Produce higher quality software than a process that is not optimized.
Clearly identify roles and responsibilities of all business and technical stakeholders.
Provide guidance for secondary processes like Project Management Lifecycle (PMLC) in measuring output from each of the 5 key activities of the SDLC.
Provide much better traceability across the 5 SDLC activities.
Deliver more value in the form of less waste.
1. Lack of process clarity.
Due to a lack of SDLC understanding, teams do not follow a consistent approach to their development process.
2. Localized optimization.
Different teams are focused on delivering their own deliverables in the most efficient way possible. Little thought is given to how other teams are affected.
3. Lack of traceability.
By the time documents reach downstream teams, the contents are out of date and the product is not aligned to current business needs.
Optimizing your SDLC will help your team better cope with business demands and deliver products more efficiently.

6. Compare your current AppDev practice when it comes to meeting business demands
14%
Only 14% of IT leaders are satisfied with their application development throughput. (Info-Tech Research Group).
Application development throughput ranked 43rd out of 45 core IT processes in terms of effectiveness. 
11%
Only 11% of organizations have highly effective application development throughput. (Info-Tech Research Group)
Business leaders are expecting new and updated services faster than development teams are currently capable of delivering them.
Application managers are challenged with balancing a defined scope of work while managing high stakeholder expectations throughout a software project.
Stakeholder requirements sometimes conflict with each other. This makes it difficult to satisfy all stakeholder requirements and usually a compromise is needed.
Stakeholders have expectations around delivery of their features. In many cases, these timelines are aggressive.

7. Use Info-Tech’s framework to optimize your SDLC
Info-Tech recommends following our optimization methodology which starts by looking for improvement opportunities within each SDLC activity and then validating them horizontally across your SDLC, avoiding local optimization. 1
REQUIREMENTS GATHERING
Document your current SDLC.
DESIGN 4
Continuously review your SDLC process to ensure standardization and accuracy. 2
Communicate and confirm your rollout strategy.
Ideate areas for improvement within each activity.
DEVELOP
TEST 3
Prioritize and consolidate against the overall SDLC.
DEPLOY & MAINTAIN

8. REQUIREMENTS GATHERING ACTIVITY DEPLOYMENT & MAINTENANCE ACTIVITY
Prioritize local optimizations by assessing the impact against your overall SDLC process
There are multiple schools of thought for optimizing the SDLC – optimize by phase, optimize holistically, and optimize through automation. Info-Tech recommends a holistic optimization approach.
LOCAL OPTIMIZATION
An approach to optimization focuses on optimizing phase-based activities, rather than considering the holistic impact that these changes may have on other activities throughout the SDLC.
HORIZONTAL OPTIMIZATION
A horizontal approach to optimization focuses on the overall SDLC process. This approach emphasizes communication across the 5 key SDLC activities through traceability.
YOU NEED TO ASSESS THE IMPACT OF LOCAL OPTIMIZATION AGAINST THE ENTIRE SDLC PROCESS
SDLC PROCESS
REQUIREMENTS GATHERING ACTIVITY
DESIGN ACTIVITY
DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITY
TESTING ACTIVITY
DEPLOYMENT & MAINTENANCE ACTIVITY
Info-Tech’s approach will help you prioritize local optimization opportunities by assessing them against the impact across your SDLC.
The very act of assessing local optimizations against the overall SDLC will bring teams together and facilitate better communication. It may lead some teams to consider optimizing their own processes to support other non-team members. To manage disagreements, keep your teams focused on the big picture and state how a given change, and everyone’s contribution, is helping to reduce waste for the business.
Info-Tech Insight

9. – Michael Hofweller, Director of Growth, OK GROW!
Consider how you can increase traceability across your SDLC process
USE TRACEABILITY TO DRIVE QUALITY THROUGH ACCOUNTABILITY AND WASTE REDUCTION
21%
Performed faster on maintenance tasks than those who do did not have traceability.
Teams that focus on traceability perform faster and deliver better quality.
60%
More correct solutions were created by those who had stable traceability practices.
Source: P. Mäder and A. Egyed
What are some of the benefits of increased traceability?
IMPROVED CHANGE MANAGEMENT
It becomes easier to detect which artifacts are impacted by a potential change request. This opens a discussion around costs and risks associated with the intended change so that all business and IT stakeholders are informed or provided the basis for a decision on whether to accept the change.
“Requirements may change. The key is to establish a structured approach to ensure that these changes are traceable throughout the entire SDLC process.”
– Michael Hofweller, Director of Growth, OK GROW!
IMPROVED ACCOUNTABILITY
Traceability allows for a clear assessment of deliverables (both interim and final). By tracking how a given deliverable is produced, it assists with quick root cause analysis in case the deliverable misses its target.
LESS WASTE
Team members have a better understanding of precise information required by other teams. This avoids wasted time on local activities that seem to be relevant but, in fact, are not because they add little value to the overall SDLC.

10. Leverage the deliverables created from this blueprint to optimize your SDLC
At the center of this project is an SDLC Optimization Playbook that is used as a living document that includes SDLC-specific information such as current and future state process flows, challenge and root cause assessments, initiative prioritizations, and a roadmap.
Regularly updating your playbook on an annual basis will enable your organization to:
Make optimization initiative decisions from up-to-date, stable, and accurate information.
Support accurate business needs and recent process changes.
Ensure transparency across stakeholders.
Use the step-by-step advice within this blueprint to assess the current state of your SDLC and build a realistic and accurate optimization plan that supports business requirements and optimizes across the SDLC.
Use the SDLC Optimization Playbook as a living document to record the current and target state of your SDLC, assess your challenges, define your optimization initiatives, and build your roadmap.
Screenshot of SDLC Optimization Roadmap from the SDLC Optimization Playbook.
Challenge Identification
Matrix screenshot.
YOUR SDLC OPTMIZATION PLAYBOOK INCLUDES:
SDLC SIPOC & RACI Chart
SDLC Current & Future State Process Flow Diagrams
Root Cause Analysis Diagrams & Challenge Identification Matrix
SDLC Optimization Initiative Prioritization
SDLC Optimization Roadmap
*This blueprint contains additional resources that support the creation of interim deliverables and the execution of project steps.

11. Case Study: A public healthcare organization is using Info-Tech’s approach to better understand and stabilize its SDLC
CASE STUDY
Industry
Source
Public Sector
Info-Tech Research Group
Challenge
Solution
Results
The organization was dealing with the development of a multi-million dollar custom-built project with a large team across various roles and business groups.
The organization needed to understand how to more effectively develop its solution as to meet its upcoming project deadline and to optimize its process for future projects.
The organization required a comprehensive solution for the following:
Understanding how its team currently functions across silos.
Developing a prioritized optimization plan that would streamline its processes across teams to build better software in a more timely manner.
The organization went through an SDLC optimization process that leveraged Info-Tech’s best practices in a four-day onsite engagement to determine the following:
Current SDLC maturity level from both high-level and phase-level perspectives.
Challenge identification and root cause analysis to determine what optimization initiatives would address current issues.
Target state process identification including tools and control points required for optimization.
Prioritization methodology, based on level of complexity and level of effort required, for an SDLC optimization initiative roadmap.
By breaking down silos between teams, the organization discovered the critical importance of optimizing its SDLC initiatives horizontally across its processes, paying close attention to traceability.
Challenge identification gave insight into situations where processes were duplicated across multiple teams, and could be optimized through more streamlined and effective processes.
The initiative prioritization process gave insight into what initiatives were obtainable based on the current team structure and resources.
The organization now has an SDLC optimization plan with prioritized tasks it can act upon today.

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