Situation: An Indian IT services firm had to answer quality concerns from a UK client, an aviation safety software company, about the software development and support service it ran for that client from Bangalore. The service ran under a 36-month agreement that began in September 2016, and the team was already meeting its service benchmarks. The client’s leadership raised the concerns at a steering committee in June 2017. The firm’s answer was to raise the standard of a service that already worked.
Intervention: From July 2017 to March 2018 he represented the firm at quarterly strategic reviews with the client’s COO, CFO and Head of Development. The firm raised its targets: every fix right first time, up from 90 in 100, tickets resolved in three days rather than five, and a velocity measure of 2.5 story points per developer per day. It replaced three team members, set job-level criteria for each role, and rebuilt governance around the quarterly review, a customer satisfaction survey every six months, and meetings at mid-sprint and at sprint close. It ran the service as one team with the client: the “Indian team” became the “BAU team”, the client’s leadership visited Bangalore and signed the team’s recognition certificates, and the plan for 2018 placed four team members in the UK.
Outcome: From July to September 2017 the team acknowledged every ticket within two hours, up from 83 in 100 in the first half of the year. It investigated 95 tickets in 100 within two days, and no one left the team. Fixes that were right first time rose from 93 in 100 to more than 99 in 100. In October 2017 the client’s development lead visited and confirmed there were no more quality challenges with the team.