NuTrend delivery model

Business Paper

Devanathan N, Software Architect

Contact details:
dev@nutrendsystems.com
# +91 98407 64728

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 1 Overview
There are several thousands of organizations that develop and deliver custom-built software. What makes
NuTrend's proposition distinctly different?
Inspired by the massive success of the open-source delivery model, where discrete individuals and
companies have successfully delivered quality products to the world through a collaborative virtual delivery
model, NuTrend has resolved to pick up a delivery model which is quite similar to the open-source delivery
model, but with a win-win revenue model as it's core offering.

NuTrend has implemented a process through which predictable deliveries can be made through a win-win
partnership with different small-sized software firms.
There are several small sized software firms in places like India, who have a good pool of low-cost
resources. The motivation level amongst these resources are pretty high. But their skills lack in the areas of
business development, project management, process management, development process, design and
architecture, etc... NuTrend bridges the gaps by collaborating with these partners (development, testing,
architects etc.) through web-based tools and guarantees predictable deliveries of software projects.

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 2 Vision
“To achieve predictability in delivering next generation solutions using a
collaborative virtual delivery model”
While several thousands organizations do develop software, hardly few deliver on time, on budget and with
high quality. It is a common story to hear projects having delays in deliveries, having huge cost overruns or
having failed to meet the expected quality levels. The IT industry has seen many failures, without doubt.
Most failures are attributed to poor organization structure, right people in wrong roles, non-collaborative
model, lack of win-win partnerships, poor utilization and productivity levels, etc. Finally the organization falls
prey to these issues and joins the list of organizations with unpredictable and unreliable deliveries.
NuTrend does intend to join this band-wagon of unpredictable organizations!
What is predictability according to NuTrend's vision? NuTrend believes that software can be predictably
delivered on three different aspects:
a) On Time - Zero slippage on milestones, every time.
b) On Budget – Zero cost over-run, every time.
c) High Quality – Zero post-delivery defects, every time.

In order to achieve this vision, NuTrend has established processes and methods to streamline the “Project
Management”, “Development” and the “Design and Architecture” processes. The equilateral triangle below
represents a project delivered on-time, on-budget with high quality.

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A good project management process accompanied by a equally good development process with an eye for
high quality is needed to achieve predictable software deliveries. If any of the above is lagging behind, then
the triangle would be skewed as shown below with examples:

This diagram shows a project with poor project

management process as well as poor development
The above diagram shows how a project with poor
process causing consistent delivery slippages and
design & architecture delays the delivery milestones
high cost-overruns although the quality is good
and causes high cost overruns
owing to a stable design and architecture.

However, all the three parameters viz. - design and

architecture, project management process and
development process should be good enough to
achieve the equilateral triangle as shown in the
previous page.

This diagram shows how a poor development process

results in high cost overruns as well us average
quality and slippages in deliveries, although
manageable.

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 3 NuTrend's “Predictable Process”

NuTrend, having set its vision to achieve predictability in software deliveries, has devised an
unique process for achieving the same.

We at NuTrend have analysed the root causes of software failures - the top ten are listed below:
1. Insufficient Requirements Management
2. Improper Project planning, allocation and tracking
3. Poor design / architecture
4. Poor code quality – no standards and best practices compliance, no reviews, etc
5. No formal testing or poor quality of testing – no test strategy, poor coverage, etc
6. Lack of automation – for code quality verification, for unit or regression testing, for documentation
generation, etc
7. Poor release management – poor version management, improper builds and releases, improper patch
management
8. Lack of collaboration of teams – project manager does not care about quality, design team does not
get into code level reviews, development and testing never get together, etc
9. No visibility on utilization and productivity – different tools used for capturing time sheet, allocating
tasks, tracking deliveries etc
10. Poor source code management – resulting in poor release management.

Of course, there are several other factors that could lead to failures in software deliveries. However, most often
than not, it is the blunders of the software development organizations that result in poor deliveries.

NuTrend believes in achieving predictable deliveries with Zero post-defect deliveries, zero slippages on
milestones and no cost overrun. NuTrend's values and principles are aligned to this goal.

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 3.1 Values

1. Complete Transparency
NuTrend's process shall be transparent to the customer. Collaboration with the customer is essential in
delivering projects successfully. Customers shall have access to process dashboards which can reflect
the status of the project at any point of time.

NuTrend shall also maintain complete transparency with the development, testing and other
partners. All stakeholders would be able to get to know the project status at any point of time. They
would have access to individual customized dashboards according to their perspectives.

2. Collaboration: Collaboration within the teams is key to success.

It is seen that collaboration is largely missing in most software companies. There are several
reasons for this. Most often, right people are not placed in the right job and hence when the
collaborate, it results in confusion as everyone tries to pull the project in different directions.

NuTrend shall take efforts to inculcate and sustain the collaborative spirit amongst it's partners.

NuTrend shall also provide tools and processes to achieve collaboration.

3. Win-Win: Win-Win partnership on revenue-sharing basis.

This is a good revenue-sharing model where all stakeholders earn for the skills that they bring
to the table. Most organizations do not have enough resources in some area or the other. As NuTrend
is willing to share the revenue on a partnership basis (for the project in execution), skilled people are
attracted to join the project.

Small-sized software firms who have resources with good “coding” skills or “testing” skills are
ideal partners for development / testing. Countries like India is abundant with skilled coders and
testers, but they lack in project management skills and process-oriented skills (not to mention the
communication skills!).

This model excels on using the right people for the right job with an attractive revenue-
sharing model. As this is an attractive proposal for skilled individuals who are aspiring to be
tomorrow's entrepreneurs, it is expected that this model could be easily made scalable with a proper
win-win partnership deal.

Appropriate training and certification of partners to establish such a huge network of partners
is planned to be set up in the near future.

4. Freedom: Encouraging a freelance work-culture

NuTrend would encourage a freelancing work culture amongst its partners, be it small
organizations or freelancers, right from the first project it undertakes. Freedom is essential to bring
about creativity and better results in the long run. Working from home is no longer a distant dream in
today's world. Catching up on this trend, NuTrend is all set to go with it's virtual delivery model.

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 3.2 Principles
NuTrend's predictable process revolves around the following principles:

1. NuTrend will have a scalable win-win partnerships on a revenue-sharing mode to achieve a

collaborative working model:
a) Development partnerships – Small sized companies who have good resources who are willing to
work collaboratively in sharing resources for delivering the project using the “Predictable Process”
approach of NuTrend.
b) Testing partnerships – Small sized companies who are willing to dedicate resources to test the
delivered projects
c) Design & Architect partnerships – Domain experts, Technical architects and designers, mostly
freelancers who contribute to the functional design or technical design / architecture of the
project.
d) Project Management – Project management is done using the web based tool.

2. NuTrend shall use a single tool to manage the following:

a) Define and adopt an iterative waterfall delivery model – One delivery every month is the theme
here!
b) Task Allocation to resources, linked to requirements, functional design or technical designs
c) Requirements management
d) Functional and Technical designs
e) Test cases, test scripts
f) Issue and Bug management
g) Time sheet entries
h) Linkages of any combination of the above to achieve traceability and derive reports to display in
dashboards.

This tool would be a web-based tool which would be used by all stakeholders.

3. NuTrend shall use automation for the following:

a) Coding Standards & Best Practices Compliance
b) Code documentation generation
c) Unit & Regression Testing with test coverage
d) Build & Packaging

NuTrend would be using continuous integration tools to achieve periodic (hourly, nightly,
weekly, etc) builds for different purposes. The entire process would be transparent to the customer.

4. NuTrend shall use complete UML and ER tools to document the design and architecture of the project
that it develops. Such documentation would be traceable to the requirements as well as the test cases.
A strong exit criteria would ensure that the software delivered is of very high quality.

5. All NuTrend projects are mandated to adopt the same process for all it's deliveries.

6. The entire infrastructure for the development server and the test server shall be on a secured location
in the web.

A virtual delivery set-up with predictable software deliveries!

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