As organizations increasingly go digital, implementing business process assurance (BPA) in an Agile development environment helps ensure that continuity is maintained, and that quality and speed are balanced.
The leader's job is to set a clear direction of what their organizations mean by "results" - Peter Drucker
Here's a partial example of how to do that with Balanced Scroecard
Business Process Excellence: Building Out Business Process CapabilitiesCentric Consulting
In this presentation, we explore whether the business process improvement capability is best built from the bottom up (a “grassroots” effort) or built via a separate, dedicated function that is governed and managed centrally.
In today’s global marketplace, successful companies must be able to integrate and quickly view quality audit information from their manufacturing sites all over the world. This strategic capability has become even more important as manufacturers have moved offshore and have become more complex. The value and immediacy of quality assurance data is a critical element to the survival of competitive manufacturing organizations. Software systems can address these issues.
Source:
Lyons Information Systems, Inc
http://www.lyonsinfo.com
Kick-Starting Digital Transformation: Four IT StrategiesCognizant
For IT organizations, digital transformation can be an especially daunting task. Keeping up with and managing ever-evolving technologies and applications entails four essential components that help accelerate time to market, minimize project risk; automate and handle thousands of requirements, enrich collaboration and manage costs.
The leader's job is to set a clear direction of what their organizations mean by "results" - Peter Drucker
Here's a partial example of how to do that with Balanced Scroecard
Business Process Excellence: Building Out Business Process CapabilitiesCentric Consulting
In this presentation, we explore whether the business process improvement capability is best built from the bottom up (a “grassroots” effort) or built via a separate, dedicated function that is governed and managed centrally.
In today’s global marketplace, successful companies must be able to integrate and quickly view quality audit information from their manufacturing sites all over the world. This strategic capability has become even more important as manufacturers have moved offshore and have become more complex. The value and immediacy of quality assurance data is a critical element to the survival of competitive manufacturing organizations. Software systems can address these issues.
Source:
Lyons Information Systems, Inc
http://www.lyonsinfo.com
Kick-Starting Digital Transformation: Four IT StrategiesCognizant
For IT organizations, digital transformation can be an especially daunting task. Keeping up with and managing ever-evolving technologies and applications entails four essential components that help accelerate time to market, minimize project risk; automate and handle thousands of requirements, enrich collaboration and manage costs.
Steelwedge Launches Next-Generation S&OP Technology Platform with New Mobile, Analytics and Big Data Capabilities. For more Information on S&OP, visit http://www.steelwedge.com/resources/s-and-op-intro
Your Challenge
Companies understand the importance of business process improvement (BPI) and recognize the touted benefits: cost savings, waste elimination, and process efficiency.
With this said, 70% of companies that embark on process improvement initiatives fail.
The high probability of failure is attributed to a number of factors, including lack of continuous improvement and failing to define measurable outcomes.
Our Advice
Adopt a forward-facing outlook. Don’t focus solely on the current state, set improvement targets upfront to drive the initiative.
Break problems down into root-cause variables. Don’t look at the symptom, dive deeper and alleviate the root cause.
Empower business analysts. Create a practical process improvement methodology that your analysts can follow.
Impact and Result
Kick off process improvement by identifying the goals and defining the improvement targets.
Start by referring to the operating model and identifying level 1, 2, and 3 processes. Once the team understands the relationship between processes, they can begin to map a level 3 process using a standard mapping notation.
Use qualitative and quantitative techniques for analyzing the root cause rather than the symptoms.
Ensure the design is aligned with the initial improvement targets. Focus on value-added activities.
Consistently monitor the process and assess the root-cause variables to gauge the success of the process improvements.
Highly experienced and skilled BUSINESS ARCHITECT/ANALYST of 14 years with a proven track record for delivery in major financial and legal institutions, healthcare regulation, and contact centre environments. Extensive full project lifecycle experience, including waterfall and Agile methods.
Experienced in managing, training, and mentoring Business Analysts of all levels in the latest industry-leading techniques. Hugely passionate about raising the profile of business analysis, increasing competency of practitioners and demonstrating how it enables faster and higher quality project outcomes to the customer.
Your Challenge
Infrastructure managers and change managers need to re-evaluate their change management process due to slow change turnaround time, too many unauthorized changes, too many incidents and outages because of poorly managed changes, or difficulty evaluating and prioritizing changes.
IT system owners often resist change management because they see it as slow and bureaucratic.
Infrastructure changes are often seen as “different” from application changes, and two (or more) processes may exist.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
ITIL provides a usable framework for change management, but full process rigor is not appropriate for every change request.
You need to design a process that is flexible enough to meet the demand for change, and strict enough to protect the live environment from change-related incidents.
A mature change management process will minimize review and approval activity. Counterintuitively, with experience in implementing changes, risk levels decline to a point where most changes are “preapproved.”
Impact and Result
Create a unified change management process that reduces risk and takes a balanced approach toward deploying changes, while also maintaining throughput of innovation and enhancements.
Categorize changes based on an industry-standard risk model with objective measures of impact and likelihood.
Establish and empower a change manager and change advisory board with the authority to manage, approve, and prioritize changes.
Establish easy-to-follow intake, assessment, and approval processes, and ensure that there is visibility into changes across the organization.
Techsync has been in the forefront in providing solutions using latest technology, to various industry verticals with a specialization in Airline Industry. Such innovative solutions has always encouraged Techsync to help customers leapfrog to achieve maximum benefit.
More information:https://flevy.com/browse/flevypro/key-performance-indicators-kpis-best-practices-4010
There are clear and measurable differences that exist between organizations that use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to monitor and assess performance and those that use KPIs to guide and drive performance improvements. Data-driven and customer-oriented leaders use KPIs to transform their organization, while those more concerned with hitting their numbers remain focused on efficiencies. Who is better positioned to adapt, evolve, and compete?
More sophisticated managers explicitly use KPIs to promote cross-functional—not just vertical—alignment. For them, KPIs are the means and methods for rigorously defining and measuring the fundamentals that matter. To be effective, KPIs must be able to clearly communicate how it tracks Value Creation and delivers value for our stakeholders—customers, employees, and investors.
This framework provides practical and actionable next steps for organizations to obtain greater value and returns from their KPI investments. It discusses 4 best practices around KPIs:
1. Focus on Customer Experience (CX)
2. Identify Top Enterprise and Top Functional KPIs
3. Foster Enterprise-wide Discussion of KPIs
4. Treat KPIs as a Special Class of Data
The 4 KPI best practices are every organization's guide to using KPIs to guide and drive performance improvements.
This deck also includes slide templates for you to use in your own business presentations.
Quality and Project Management Professional with
17 years of experience in all aspects of Quality and project Management to the product-based, service-based, Financial Services & investment Banking Sectors
It’s a well known fact: More companies focus on customer service effectiveness during a downturn than when sales are buoyant and the economy is on the boil. The approach is right. Customer retention becomes a key focus area during a downturn, as it is 10 times more expensive to create a totally new customer than selling some more of your existing product portfolio to existing customers. Most companies lose some 20-25% of their customer base annually for a variety of reasons. An effective retention strategy will in fact be able to squeeze growth out of arresting attrition! Many companies will also take the approach that the existing customer base is an asset worth protecting and what better way to keep customers than by providing exceptional customer service!
Lean-Six Sigma may conjure up visions of a complex production / logistics based initiatives designed to improve industrial processes and drive costs out. Little is in fact known about lean-Six Sigma applied to the customer service environment. In this paper we will explore some approaches and find some pretty good arguments why lean-six sigma based programs are particularly effective in the customer service environment.
Proactive steps to ensure the success of the next ERP project.
The main goal of this presentation is to provide learned lessons and project recommendations
by assessing the failure of Avon order managementsystem project from an IT projectmanagement perspective
Optimizing Product Realization Costs Across the Value ChainCognizant
Across a range of industries, realization of cost optimization requires a holistic approach throughout the product lifecycle - requirements, design, manufacture and post-launch - in order to weed out cost overruns and ensure the highest quality process and products.
Business Assurance: The Quality Implications of Digital TransformationCognizant
To advance the digital business agenda, QA organizations must break loose from their traditional bug testing shackles and embrace frictionless, full lifecycle automation and a continuous delivery approach.
Steelwedge Launches Next-Generation S&OP Technology Platform with New Mobile, Analytics and Big Data Capabilities. For more Information on S&OP, visit http://www.steelwedge.com/resources/s-and-op-intro
Your Challenge
Companies understand the importance of business process improvement (BPI) and recognize the touted benefits: cost savings, waste elimination, and process efficiency.
With this said, 70% of companies that embark on process improvement initiatives fail.
The high probability of failure is attributed to a number of factors, including lack of continuous improvement and failing to define measurable outcomes.
Our Advice
Adopt a forward-facing outlook. Don’t focus solely on the current state, set improvement targets upfront to drive the initiative.
Break problems down into root-cause variables. Don’t look at the symptom, dive deeper and alleviate the root cause.
Empower business analysts. Create a practical process improvement methodology that your analysts can follow.
Impact and Result
Kick off process improvement by identifying the goals and defining the improvement targets.
Start by referring to the operating model and identifying level 1, 2, and 3 processes. Once the team understands the relationship between processes, they can begin to map a level 3 process using a standard mapping notation.
Use qualitative and quantitative techniques for analyzing the root cause rather than the symptoms.
Ensure the design is aligned with the initial improvement targets. Focus on value-added activities.
Consistently monitor the process and assess the root-cause variables to gauge the success of the process improvements.
Highly experienced and skilled BUSINESS ARCHITECT/ANALYST of 14 years with a proven track record for delivery in major financial and legal institutions, healthcare regulation, and contact centre environments. Extensive full project lifecycle experience, including waterfall and Agile methods.
Experienced in managing, training, and mentoring Business Analysts of all levels in the latest industry-leading techniques. Hugely passionate about raising the profile of business analysis, increasing competency of practitioners and demonstrating how it enables faster and higher quality project outcomes to the customer.
Your Challenge
Infrastructure managers and change managers need to re-evaluate their change management process due to slow change turnaround time, too many unauthorized changes, too many incidents and outages because of poorly managed changes, or difficulty evaluating and prioritizing changes.
IT system owners often resist change management because they see it as slow and bureaucratic.
Infrastructure changes are often seen as “different” from application changes, and two (or more) processes may exist.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
ITIL provides a usable framework for change management, but full process rigor is not appropriate for every change request.
You need to design a process that is flexible enough to meet the demand for change, and strict enough to protect the live environment from change-related incidents.
A mature change management process will minimize review and approval activity. Counterintuitively, with experience in implementing changes, risk levels decline to a point where most changes are “preapproved.”
Impact and Result
Create a unified change management process that reduces risk and takes a balanced approach toward deploying changes, while also maintaining throughput of innovation and enhancements.
Categorize changes based on an industry-standard risk model with objective measures of impact and likelihood.
Establish and empower a change manager and change advisory board with the authority to manage, approve, and prioritize changes.
Establish easy-to-follow intake, assessment, and approval processes, and ensure that there is visibility into changes across the organization.
Techsync has been in the forefront in providing solutions using latest technology, to various industry verticals with a specialization in Airline Industry. Such innovative solutions has always encouraged Techsync to help customers leapfrog to achieve maximum benefit.
More information:https://flevy.com/browse/flevypro/key-performance-indicators-kpis-best-practices-4010
There are clear and measurable differences that exist between organizations that use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to monitor and assess performance and those that use KPIs to guide and drive performance improvements. Data-driven and customer-oriented leaders use KPIs to transform their organization, while those more concerned with hitting their numbers remain focused on efficiencies. Who is better positioned to adapt, evolve, and compete?
More sophisticated managers explicitly use KPIs to promote cross-functional—not just vertical—alignment. For them, KPIs are the means and methods for rigorously defining and measuring the fundamentals that matter. To be effective, KPIs must be able to clearly communicate how it tracks Value Creation and delivers value for our stakeholders—customers, employees, and investors.
This framework provides practical and actionable next steps for organizations to obtain greater value and returns from their KPI investments. It discusses 4 best practices around KPIs:
1. Focus on Customer Experience (CX)
2. Identify Top Enterprise and Top Functional KPIs
3. Foster Enterprise-wide Discussion of KPIs
4. Treat KPIs as a Special Class of Data
The 4 KPI best practices are every organization's guide to using KPIs to guide and drive performance improvements.
This deck also includes slide templates for you to use in your own business presentations.
Quality and Project Management Professional with
17 years of experience in all aspects of Quality and project Management to the product-based, service-based, Financial Services & investment Banking Sectors
It’s a well known fact: More companies focus on customer service effectiveness during a downturn than when sales are buoyant and the economy is on the boil. The approach is right. Customer retention becomes a key focus area during a downturn, as it is 10 times more expensive to create a totally new customer than selling some more of your existing product portfolio to existing customers. Most companies lose some 20-25% of their customer base annually for a variety of reasons. An effective retention strategy will in fact be able to squeeze growth out of arresting attrition! Many companies will also take the approach that the existing customer base is an asset worth protecting and what better way to keep customers than by providing exceptional customer service!
Lean-Six Sigma may conjure up visions of a complex production / logistics based initiatives designed to improve industrial processes and drive costs out. Little is in fact known about lean-Six Sigma applied to the customer service environment. In this paper we will explore some approaches and find some pretty good arguments why lean-six sigma based programs are particularly effective in the customer service environment.
Proactive steps to ensure the success of the next ERP project.
The main goal of this presentation is to provide learned lessons and project recommendations
by assessing the failure of Avon order managementsystem project from an IT projectmanagement perspective
Optimizing Product Realization Costs Across the Value ChainCognizant
Across a range of industries, realization of cost optimization requires a holistic approach throughout the product lifecycle - requirements, design, manufacture and post-launch - in order to weed out cost overruns and ensure the highest quality process and products.
Business Assurance: The Quality Implications of Digital TransformationCognizant
To advance the digital business agenda, QA organizations must break loose from their traditional bug testing shackles and embrace frictionless, full lifecycle automation and a continuous delivery approach.
From 'Zero Defect Software' to 'First Time Right with Business'Cognizant
Quality Assurance (QA) departments now need to go beyond zero defect software delivery to encompass both IT and business requirements through end-to-end testing protocols. Representing a true step change for IT organizations, business process assurance entails a blend of analytics-driven Business Process Testing (BPT) and User Acceptance Testing (UAT).
Top Five Secrets for a Successful Enterprise Mobile QA Automation StrategyCognizant
From tool selection through choosing the best framework, here are five ways quality assurance teams can tilt the odds of successful digital transformation in their favor.
Digital Quality Assurance: Insights and Trends Shaping Banking and Financial ...Cognizant
In the face of surging digital disruption, banks and financial institutions need to hone a critical focus on digital quality assurance to ensure and enhance the end-user experience. We explore the testing issues relating to the cloud, mobility, big data analytics, Agile and DevOps, and suggest a quality assurance strategy.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is an extremely complex technical environment—involving millions of sensors and big data—in which QA plays a hugely important role and goes beyond merely validating working sets of device software. A comprehensive IoT QA strategy includes addressing both the device interaction layer (covering standards, interoperability and security) and the user interaction layer (covering network capabilities, the user experience and the back-end IoT environment) and doing performance, security, compatibility and exploratory testing across the IoT ecosystem.
You've heard about limiting WIP (Work-In-Progress) but how good are you at limiting red time? Red time is when you have compilation errors and/or failing tests. A growing group of practitioners have learned how to effectively reduce red time while test-driving and refactoring code. To understand how to limit red time, it helps to visualize it.
In this talk, Naresh Jain demonstrates various strategies to limit your time in Red. He analyzes live programming sessions using graphs that clearly visualize red time. You'll learn what programming processes help or hurt our ability to limit red time and you'll gain an appreciation for the visual cues that can help make you a better programmer and fellow member of the Limited Red Society.
Intent of this tutorial is to provide the participants with a hands-on-experience of real world refactoring by taking an open source project and refactoring it.
Benefits
After attending this session, the participants should be able to:
Build a common vocabulary in the refactoring space
Identify code smells
Eliminate code smells by applying the simple refactoring techniques explained in Martin Fowler‘s “Refactoring”
Write better unit/functional tests for legacy code
Understand some of the techniques and pitfalls in refactoring legacy code in the absence of unit and functional tests [”Working effectively with legacy code “]
Take existing code and refactor it to standard design patterns [Refactoring to patterns]
Learn about the internals of the open source project chosen to refactor
Know where to look to continue learning the techniques of refactoring
Naresh and Shyam's experience report how teams and their interactions evolved at various large enterprise thru their agile transition in the last 5-6 years.
På grund av att många försöker få med “allt” I en IT-upphandling, är det endast 40% av det som byggs som gör nytta i digitala tjänster och produkter. Lean UX hjälper oss att bara bygga de 40% i stället.
Mina nästa kurser inom ämnet Lean UX: https://crisp.se/kurser/kurstyper/product-discovery-med-lean-ux
Jeff Gothelfs kurs för managers: https://crisp.se/kurser/kurstyper/lean-ux-in-the-enterprise
Upphandling med Lean UX och Agila kontrakt för upphandling med minskad waste: https://crisp.se/kurser/kurstyper/certifierad-agil-bestallare
"Release Early, Release Often" is a proven mantra, but what happens when you push this practice to it's limits? .i.e. deploying latest code changes to the production servers every time a developer checks-in code.
At Industrial Logic, developers are deploying code dozens of times a day, rapidly responding to their customers and reducing their "code inventory".
In this talk I explained the approach, deployment architecture, tools and culture needed for CD and how at Industrial Logic, we have gradually got there.
You can walk away with some good ideas of how your company can practice CD too.
Importance of Business Process Test Automation - Bahaa Al Zubaidi.pdfBahaa Al Zubaidi
BPT or Business Process Testing assists enterprises for streamlining their business processes. It does so with practical methodologies for problem-solving while creating applications or software.
BPT facilitates swift turnaround time for software or application releases. A reliable service provider uses a mix of comprehensive automated and manual testing practices to support companies become battle-ready to scale to greater heights.
White paper quality at the speed of digitalrajni singh
Our modern testing practices help speed up the current scope of quality assurance with help of a cognitive approach. Here is the link to download my published whitepaper on "Quality at the Speed of Digital" https://www.nagarro.com/qa-at-the-speed-of-digital #qualityassurance
Making a Quantum Leap with Continuous Analytics-Based QACognizant
By correlating analytics data across the IT lifecycle, enterprises can design and implement a level of testing that improves predictive mechanisms and anticipates ever-changing business needs.
Everything you didn’t know (and should) about User Acceptance Testingpanayaofficial
From planning to scoping to execution: optimize your IT- Business User collaboration for a comprehensive, seamless Testing process.
Get expert tips based on real customer use cases for your ERP & Enterprise UATs (e.g. SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, ServiceNow, WorkDay).
Learn how to:
- Easily engage non-technical, business users with differentiating ease of use and powerful testing accelerators.
- Improve visibility and control over the entire UAT testing cycles via real-time, actionable insights.
- Automate test documentation for high-quality evidence and compliance
- Manage smart defect management with closed-loop workflows
- Know exactly what to (not) test and eliminate risk, using AI powered Change Analysis
- Reduce testing time & costs
Reporting, KPI Reporting, Data-Analytics, Data-Virtualization
Case Study on User Acceptance Testing (UAT) report which is an output of Executed test scripts/cases.
By focusing on organizational enablers and robust software engineering practices, e-commerce companies can shorten the development lifecycle, outmaneuver the competition and remain relevant in the eyes of customers.
The Fundamentals Of BPM Innovation In TelecommunicationsNathaniel Palmer
Review the fundamentals of embracing BPM in the telecommunications industry. This session will identify goals, obstacles, strategies, and the rewards of embracing BPM. Examples from KT Freetel Co. Ltd., Korea’s
second largest mobile communications company are highlighted throughout the presentation.
Test Automation Strategies in a Continuous Delivery EcosystemCognizant
Testing organizations (QA) striving to attain continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) in a Lean or Agile environment can choose among and make use of the intelligent automation tools and techniques presented here.
Everything You Need to Build a Risk-Based Testing Strategy for SAPWorksoft
SAP testing isn’t easy. Organizations are challenged to keep pace with an incredible (and growing) volume of enhancements, updates, upgrades, and new apps. But traditional SAP impact analysis is time consuming, costly, and difficult to manage. That’s why the world’s top companies are turning to risk-based testing. Here’s how you can get started too.
Using Adaptive Scrum to Tame Process Reverse Engineering in Data Analytics Pr...Cognizant
Organizations rely on analytics to make intelligent decisions and improve business performance, which sometimes requires reproducing business processes from a legacy application to a digital-native state to reduce the functional, technical and operational debts. Adaptive Scrum can reduce the complexity of the reproduction process iteratively as well as provide transparency in data analytics porojects.
It Takes an Ecosystem: How Technology Companies Deliver Exceptional ExperiencesCognizant
Experience is evolving into a strategy that reaches across technology companies. We offer guidance on the rise of experience and its role in business modernization, with details on how orgnizations can build the ecosystem to support it.
The Work Ahead: Transportation and Logistics Delivering on the Digital-Physic...Cognizant
The T&L industry appears poised to accelerate its long-overdue modernization drive, as the pandemic spurs an increased need for agility and resilience, according to our study.
Enhancing Desirability: Five Considerations for Winning Digital InitiativesCognizant
To be a modern digital business in the post-COVID era, organizations must be fanatical about the experiences they deliver to an increasingly savvy and expectant user community. Getting there requires a mastery of human-design thinking, compelling user interface and interaction design, and a focus on functional and nonfunctional capabilities that drive business differentiation and results.
The Work Ahead in Manufacturing: Fulfilling the Agility MandateCognizant
According to our research, manufacturers are well ahead of other industries in their IoT deployments but need to marshal the investment required to meet today’s intensified demands for business resilience.
The Work Ahead in Higher Education: Repaving the Road for the Employees of To...Cognizant
Higher-ed institutions expect pandemic-driven disruption to continue, especially as hyperconnectivity, analytics and AI drive personalized education models over the lifetime of the learner, according to our recent research.
Engineering the Next-Gen Digital Claims Organisation for Australian General I...Cognizant
In recent years, insurers have invested in technology platforms and process improvements to improve
claims outcomes. Leaders will build on this foundation across the claims landscape, spanning experience,
operations, customer service and the overall supply chain with market-differentiating capabilities to
achieve sustainable results.
Profitability in the Direct-to-Consumer Marketplace: A Playbook for Media and...Cognizant
Amid constant change, industry leaders need an upgraded IT infrastructure capable of adapting to audience expectations while proactively anticipating ever-evolving business requirements.
Green Rush: The Economic Imperative for SustainabilityCognizant
Green business is good business, according to our recent research, whether for companies monetizing tech tools used for sustainability or for those that see the impact of these initiatives on business goals.
Policy Administration Modernization: Four Paths for InsurersCognizant
The pivot to digital is fraught with numerous obstacles but with proper planning and execution, legacy carriers can update their core systems and keep pace with the competition, while proactively addressing customer needs.
The Work Ahead in Utilities: Powering a Sustainable Future with DigitalCognizant
Utilities are starting to adopt digital technologies to eliminate slow processes, elevate customer experience and boost sustainability, according to our recent study.
AI in Media & Entertainment: Starting the Journey to ValueCognizant
Up to now, the global media & entertainment industry (M&E) has been lagging most other sectors in its adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). But our research shows that M&E companies are set to close the gap over the coming three years, as they ramp up their investments in AI and reap rising returns. The first steps? Getting a firm grip on data – the foundation of any successful AI strategy – and balancing technology spend with investments in AI skills.
Operations Workforce Management: A Data-Informed, Digital-First ApproachCognizant
As #WorkFromAnywhere becomes the rule rather than the exception, organizations face an important question: How can they increase their digital quotient to engage and enable a remote operations workforce to work collaboratively to deliver onclient requirements and contractual commitments?
Five Priorities for Quality Engineering When Taking Banking to the CloudCognizant
As banks move to cloud-based banking platforms for lower costs and greater agility, they must seamlessly integrate technologies and workflows while ensuring security, performance and an enhanced user experience. Here are five ways cloud-focused quality assurance helps banks maximize the benefits.
Getting Ahead With AI: How APAC Companies Replicate Success by Remaining FocusedCognizant
Changing market dynamics are propelling Asia-Pacific businesses to take a highly disciplined and focused approach to ensuring that their AI initiatives rapidly scale and quickly generate heightened business impact.
The Work Ahead in Intelligent Automation: Coping with Complexity in a Post-Pa...Cognizant
Intelligent automation continues to be a top driver of the future of work, according to our recent study. To reap the full advantages, businesses need to move from isolated to widespread deployment.
The Work Ahead in Intelligent Automation: Coping with Complexity in a Post-Pa...
How Business Process Assurance Can Enhance Quality When Applying Agile Methodologies
1. How Business Process Assurance
Can Enhance Quality When Applying
Agile Methodologies
As organizations operating in highly regulated environments become
digital, the assurance of enterprise business processes supported
by myriad technologies and methodologies can be challenging to IT
leaders. A structured approach that balances quality with speed can
help assure that digital business processes deliver significant value
to enterprises.
Executive Summary
In today’s digitally transforming environment, IT
organizations have realized the importance of
Agile development methodologies. The imple-
mentation of Agile has enabled enterprises to
modernize their business models to suit the end-
consumer’s ever-changing demands by making
business processes nimble and speeding up
development and deployment processes.
However, the blinkered focus on speed has
opened a Pandora’s Box by compromising
integrity and increasing the risk to business. With
Agile, business process assurance (BPA) helps
businesses navigate an increasingly complex and
regulated market by being resilient and nimble at
the same time.
This white paper explores the concepts of BPA,
provides key insights on Agile implementation
challenges and decodes how BPA assures Agile
project success.
Business Process Assurance Defined
BPA ensures that a set of end-to-end business
processes function as intended. It aims to
identify defects before the code is deployed into
production, thereby ensuring that the cost to
repair a flaw is at a bare minimum and prevents
any negative impacts on revenue, reputation or
customer satisfaction. BPA focuses on require-
ments and ensures business resilience, thus
providing adequate functional coverage. (For
more on BPA, read our white paper, From ‘Zero
cognizant 20-20 insights | december 2016
• Cognizant 20-20 Insights
Defect Software’ to ‘First Time Right with
Business’.)
Business process validation can be performed at
various timescales:
• Project basis: First-time deployment of new
enterprise software systems.
• Periodic basis: Regular monthly, quarterly or
annual updates to enterprise software.
2. 2cognizant 20-20 insights
• Continuous basis: Round-the-clock validation
of enterprise systems and process swiftness.
BPA Mitigates Agile Challenges
Being a nimble and flexible methodology,
Agile supports enterprises in delivering faster
releases, along with building efficiency in
change management. But Agile does come with
a whirlpool of practical challenges: disparate
teams, fragmented deliverables and speed-over-
integrity are just some.
BPA can overcome daunting Agile development
challenges as follows.
• User stories without acceptance test: Orga-
nizations that depend on Agile are focusing on
“business acceptability,” which transcends user
stories. Changes to a fragment of the business
process may have a ripple effect on the rest.
Stifling and constricted schedules during
change implementation often lead to business
processes being ignored. By leveraging a com-
prehensive business process with a contextual
view, BPA assures business continuity.
• Deficiency in expertise: The ideology behind
Agile is built on a time-boxed development of
multiple small-duration iterations. This calls for
a competent team adept with specialized skills
in the respective domains and technology. BPA
includes the expertise of ex-industry veterans
and the knowledge of subject matter experts
(SMEs) who study and analyze each Sprint of
Agile project changes.
• Tackling complexity of mature applications:
Complexities in application and an exponential
increase in the number of lines of code lead to
performance-related issues after go-live. With
an analytics-driven approach, BPA automation
supports multiple-Sprint regressions scenarios
by identifying business-critical solar flares, and
ensures end-to-end process validation.
• Early detection of defects: When defects are
found at a later stage of an iteration, there can
be delays in post-production, thus becoming an
expensiveissue.Timespentfixingabugequates
to time taken away from producing customer
value, and may be one of the reasons why Agile
teams are pushing for zero-defect products.
BPA proposes a comprehensive defect-tracking
mechanism by regularly updating the process-
flow heat map with recent defect logs. It also
deploys analytics to predict defects early in the
lifecycle, while designing the test strategy to
validate business process flow.
Quick Take
BPA implements automation methodologies that
complement test design, QA processes and ana-
lytics-driven regression in a multi-Sprint strategy.
• Test design and maintenance: BPA requires a
test design automation tool (e.g., our ADPART
tool) to accelerate test case generation, test
suites optimization, change management and
impact analysis, based on business process
flows.
• Analytics-driven regression: BPA re-creates
a robust regression test suite that validates
business readiness with multiple Sprints by
using BPA asset repositories, scripts mapped to
outstanding defects and critical business flows.
These flows are identified through careful
analysis of nonconventional business inputs.
Agile’s Lifecycle Automation
3. cognizant 20-20 insights 3
Doing the BPA Six-Step
Agile Project A
Step 1
The complete set
of user stories for a
Sprint are studied
in detail in order
to understand the
scope and the func-
tionalities involved.
Business Process Assets Mapping
Step 2
Based on this
understanding, the
changes are mapped
to the business
process flow maps
maintained in
Business Process
Assets.
Impact Analysis
Step 3
The impact of
process change
within the Sprint
changes is identified.
4. cognizant 20-20 insights 4
Regression Testing
Step 6
Post-test execution
of all the Sprints;
automated
regression testing
of end-to-end
business scenarios
is performed to
validate business
readiness.
Figure 1
Redesign Test Suite
Step 4
The test suite assets
are enriched with
business-outcome-
oriented scenarios
to ensure that the
changes do not
impact the core
business processes.
Step 5
Test execution of
all the Sprints is
conducted with an
end-user mindset to
validate all changes.
Test Execution for Each Sprint
5. cognizant 20-20 insights 5
• No holistic view of the release: Agile focuses
on “story cards,” or small pieces of a change.
Each story card may be developed, and then
tested, to work perfectly, but applications,
systems and business workflows go beyond
the story cards. With disparate and segregated
teams, it becomes difficult to create an
overview of the underlying user story that
ensures all links are addressed. By focusing
on the essentials required to conduct business
as usual, comply with regulations and guide
user behavior, BPA imparts the confidence a
business needs to make informed implementa-
tion decisions.
As the above points demonstrate, businesses
can address key Agile challenges and ensure
successful delivery by incorporating BPA.
BPA in an Agile Environment
Throughout the application of BPA, business
flows are progressively checked and monitored
by using representative data that confirms the
accuracy of business rules. It ensures that all
underlying transactions are being performed in
the expected manner, even during exceptions and
fraud scenarios, and are compliant with regula-
tions across the business process.
It is possible to infuse BPA into an Agile framework
by designing user stories and acceptance criteria
that are based on the prerequisite business
and end-user outcomes. Figure 1 (pages 3
and 4) depicts a six-step BPA solution in an Agile
environment.
Agile’s BPA Best Practices
Designed to withstand turbulent environments,
Agile is a team-based approach that gives the
ability to make decisions without the introduction
of risks. This principle intersects perfectly with
BPA’s methodology of continuous improvement,
ease of use and prevention of shocks. The best
practices propagated by BPA for Agile are shown
in Figure 2.
Overcoming BPA Challenges in Agile
Implementation and Mitigation
• Inadequate right-skilled resources:
>> Utilize the subject matter experts/ex-audi-
tors/ex-bankers to prepare the BPA assets
and to bring a business perspective.
Excelling with Agile BPA
Figure 2
BPA in Agile environment
E2E business process validation during
stabilization of Sprint/UAT Sprint/release.
E2E business test assets
(global generic/regulatory/
client-specific) in each Sprint.
User surrogacy: Ex-banker/
business analyst/business
tester model.
Shift rght: Production
Issue analytics, most
likely to fail (MLTF)
scores for improved
test coverage.
Business process
automation: Automated
business components for
stitching together automated
acceptance tests.
Shift left: Acceptance
tests shared /used at the
start of the Sprint.
End-to-end view: E2E
business process
articulation along with
user story.
6. cognizant 20-20 insights 6
• Unavailability of business process assets
before project commencement:
>> Leverage SMEs to customize existing BPA
assets as per user’s client’s requirements.
>> Up-skill Agile resources through intensive
and quick training.
• Lack of stakeholder understanding about
business expectations:
>> Implement a continuous change manage-
ment process to assess the impact(s) of
changes; develop appropriate mitigation
strategies that account for all changes.
>> Avoid scope creep.
• Nonavailability of risk assessment and
impact analysis:
>> Make an analytics-led risk assessment and
prioritize functionalities.
>> Redefine the forthcoming Sprints based on
the criticality of the impact.
• Nonavailability of scenarios/tests covering
the enterprise-to-enterprise (E2E) perspec-
tive:
>> Design scenarios covering impacted E2E
business processes.
>> Design scenarios to cover the regulatory im-
pact, and compliance-related tests.
Looking Forward
As enterprises pivot between legacy and digital
worlds, their IT organizations need to create
open, intelligent, “on-the-go,” network-driven
assurance ecosystems. These systems will drive
cost efficiency with automation, increase pre-
dictability through intelligent systems and help
implement analytics and industrialization through
platform-led delivery models.
In highly regulated environments, the stakes are
even higher. As enterprises look to transform
their business models and adopt digital at scale
through Agile development techniques, they must
keep a careful eye on regulatory compliance.
By embracing BPA, they will be better positioned
to meet regulatory mandates while accelerating
digital business readiness and resilience. Doing
so will allow them to maintain tight operational
controls and identify exceptions, as well as reduce
fraud and the cost of quality through reuse,
automation and optimization.
Reference
• Steve Miller, “Common Challenges for Agile Testing Teams,” Smartbear, March 19, 2012, http://blog.
smartbear.com/sqc/top-5-common-challenges-for-agile-testing-teams/.
To learn more about ADPART, visit https://adpart.cognizant.com/.
As enterprises pivot between
legacy and digital worlds, their IT
organizations need to create open,
intelligent, “on-the-go,” network-
driven assurance ecosystems.