IT Development Review

This package is aimed at organisations who want to gain better insight into their Software Development process. 

An IT Development Review is warranted when senior IT and Organisation leadership express frustrations such as “We’re not sure what they are doing”, “They tell me they are busy, but I can’t get the functional changes I’ve asked for done”. “We never get what we’ve asked for” or “They’ve gone Agile, but it doesn’t seem to be giving the performance improvement that was promised”.

This is the most detailed and in-depth review that we carry out and traverses the whole ecosystem of software development from individual team members to the board, it maps out the realities of the process that is being followed and makes prioritised, actionable recommendations to improve delivery.

What comes out of the IT Development Review?

A document highlighting the reality of the IT Development process that is being followed, showing where this aligns with the "designed" process, and where it has diverged.

Where appropriate, a description of any additional process from Development to Production, highlighting any bottlenecks in the process.

Indication of any quality gaps or risks in the end-to-end process.

Where indicated, description of any areas that may cause regulatory concern.

A prioritised list of recommendations, taking business priority, risk and cost into account; where appropriate expanded metrics will be suggested to assist in tracking the success of implementation.

What goes into the IT Development Review?

Ahead of the review itself we would ask you to provide the following:

• Process documents and diagrams
• Read only system access for relevant systems. This covers both those systems used to develop software such as an IDE, Source Control system, Test repositories etc. and those systems used to report on the development process, from bottom to top.
• Runbooks and Documentation for any of the systems that have been produced by the Development team (or that they have inherited from elsewhere).

During the review itself we would look to engage individuals who participate at every stage of the Development process 

• CTO/CIO and any board members who direct IT Development or report on it.
• IT Development Directors, Head of Software Engineering, IT Line Managers.
• Programme Managers, Project Managers, Scrum masters , Product Owners, Finance Directors and other individuals involved in the financial governance of IT Development.
• Architects, Designers and Business Analysts
• Front End Developers, Back End Developers, Full stack developers, Test Engineers, QA Engineers, DevOps Engineers
• Operations Managers, Operations staff

We would look to spend at least an hour with each individual over the course of the engagement, the contents of those conversations varying from crystalisation of the information being received, to the specifics of day to day implementation and operations.

We would look to participate in as many development "ceremonies" as possible, along with governance and management meetings over the course of at least one software iteration. 

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