It’s not the Software developers who are slowing down delivery

The first step to speeding up software delivery is to determine if the software developers are actually causing the biggest slowdown.

When we join an organization to help solve this problem, our Agile Coaching and Delivery Specialists start by mapping out how long it takes to complete each stage of preparation before the software developers begin their work. We then map out the testing and deployment pipelines and the deployment to production. This approach helps identify bottlenecks and streamline the entire process for faster delivery.

Value stream mapping

This process is called Value Stream Mapping where you work out how much time we’re spending on each of those stages. We’ve worked with a number of organizations this year where we’ve been asked to improve the speed of software development, but what we’ve actually found is that it’s all the things around software development that are slow. 

Where we’re seeing slowdown have been around getting requirements to the developers, getting the designs done, and then also testing. The opportunity here is around getting faster feedback to the developers around the results of the tests. We also ask if there’s an option to  automate the testing so it can be incorporated into the pipeline. All of these things speed up the work for developers.

Top five tips for speeding up developers

#1 – Implement and embed a mature agile process to make sure all your work is visible. It’s critical that everyone can see what’s coming up and how that work flows through the system and using Scrum or Kanban is a great way to achieve this.

#2 – Implement DevOps and that means bringing developers and operations closer together so that you can speed up the time it takes from finishing development through to getting the work in production. Automate everything in DevOps. That’s the real key to speeding up that process. Have a go at automating the testing, the deployment and make sure you’re invested in the right automated tools. It’s worth it to speed up that process.

#3 – Have a look at Lean and Lean software development. Identify the seven wastes of Lean software and remove those wastes.

#4 – Utilize in design thinking. Make sure we’re working on developing the right thing. The ultimate goal is to work on delivering the highest value from the customer’s point of view first.

#5 – And last but not least, invest and support your high-performing cross-functional team/s to deliver the work. Make sure your team is a ‘two pizza size team’ with all the skills within the team that it needs to deliver work to the customer and maintain that work as well.

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