Continuous Improvement Opportunities that added value...

Introduction

Continuous improvement is a key to delivering value adds to clients thereby enabling them to optimize in their business. Based on the improvements identified and implemented across multiple client scenarios, I am illustrating various key dimensions and levers.

Cost reduction:

• Onsite/offshore rationalisation

• Pyramid optimization

• Application rationalisation

• License Optimization (Azure/AWS/GCP, Tools, etc)

• Infrastructure rationalisation (Servers, Data centers, Networks, etc)

• Reusable assets creation and usage

Engineering Quality:

• Tools usage for Code reviews, Build, Testing, CI, Code promotion, Deployment

• Usage of design patterns

• Improving maturity of Agile processes

Prevention maturity:

• Technical debt reduction

• NFR improvement - Availability, Maintainability, Performance, Scalability, Product upgrades

Automation:

• Automatable manual tasks/repeating activities in the process

• Monitoring jobs

Process strengthening:

• Intelligent Process Automation/ Robotic Process Automation

• Application of Lean

• Measurement systems to monitor the effectiveness

People maturity:

• Upskilling of people

• Cross skilling people within team

Example Continuous Improvement Opportunities:::

• Clearing unused AWS instances

• People optimization by measuring utilization

• Looking at the doing most of the work at Offshore in an Onsite - Offshore model

• Using Jenkins, stop the unused EC2 instances

• Having scheduled nightly run of regression suite rather than running during working hours once in a sprint. This will improve build quality and also save effort

• Usage of reusable components

Concluding note

Continuous improvement is no more a delighter. It is an essential component to ensure that we continue in the books of our clients. Infact, it has also become a contractual obligation to showcase Year on Year improvement. Hence a structured approach to identify improvement areas and acting on it is a key!