Application Development

World Class Operations - Impact Workshop

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Beyond Practical Research Workshops Get You To Results

Workshops: Leverage Best-Practices Research and Get to Action

Unlike other Research firms, we believe its important to help our members implement improvements.
We offer a 40-hour workshop, which allows you to make systematic improvements to your core processes.
Workshops are designed to help focus attention, create alignment, and ensure best practices are put to work at your organization.
Our workshops help you get to immediate impact and results, and are tailored to your situation and needs.

Workshops: Focused on You Implementing Improvements

Diagnose
Current
State

The goal of each Capability Optimization Workshop is to create tangible benefits

and clear improvements as a direct result of the workshop.
Specific deliverables, goals, metrics, and outcomes are established for
each workshop.
Successful workshops will leverage our years of analyst experience and
written research to provide an engaging experience which focuses
on implementing and getting to measurable results.

Measuring
Benefits

Optimization
Workshop

Each workshop begins by diagnosing the current state, and then

focuses on designing high impact improvements based on
best-practices research.

Implementation
Support

RightSizing
Process

Process
Design

Three and six month follow-up will occur to ensure benefit realization.

Info-Tech Workshops provide the best practices and implementation support

necessary to help an IT leader build a World Class IT Operation
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Make development optimization about business alignment

Design and architecture encompass a series of tradeoffs between stakeholders to arrive at a suitable
compromise from which to build on. As such there may be many possible designs to choose from.

Once a design is chosen there may be several ways to implement the design, each with its own
tradeoffs based on scalability, security, and integration.

Each implementation approach, in turn, affects the infrastructure components required.

Business
Goal

Design A

Design B

Implement A

Infrastructure
A

Design C

Implement B

Infrastructure
B

Infrastructure
C

Each decision should be traceable

back to a business goal to avoid
development effort on a requirement
that serves no business need.
If a design, implementation, or
infrastructure component needs to be
modified, classic impact analysis
techniques should survey the impacts
of such a change.

Infrastructure
D

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See the difference optimization makes

Poor Application Development

Optimized Application
Development

Projects experience cost and budget overruns and fail

to meet key requirements.

Code is reused where possible and practical,

eliminating duplication of effort.

Process bottlenecks slow down development

unnecessarily.

Efforts are prioritized and time-boxed, and time is

spent productively on whats most important.

New technologies significantly challenge existing

processes, contributing to process breakdown.

The software development process strikes a balance

between quality and throughput.

QA is focused on the wrong bugs. Issues that should

have been solved during development are added to
the QA workload.

The application development process has a built-in

capacity to adapt to change.

Software requirements continually change and

developers cant keep pace.
Communication between the business and IT is
infrequent and unclear.

Documentation at each stage of the development

process is a boon, not a burden.
The development process moves smoothly from one
stage to the next.

Lack of software quality or throughput are often symptoms of organizational meta issues
around process and control. Step back and ask Why is this happening? to drive toward
root issues instead of just fixing symptoms.
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Develop a standardized and comprehensive application

development plan to minimize downstream hurdles
A comprehensive development design and management strategy can bring
issues upfront before they escalate at an inappropriate time.
Business and IT goals are
misaligned.
Application solutions can
operate in a stable state, but do
not address the critical
business problems.

A lack of standardized
documentation can pose a
maintenance risk due to
incomplete or missing
information.

Alignment

Resources

Artifacts

Viewpoints

IT may scramble to fill

resourcing gaps near the
deadline of projects.
Communication can become a
hindrance when unfamiliar
individuals are brought into the
project.

The design and execution may

be tailored to a specific domain.
Diverging philosophies between
domains can lead to cost overruns.
Without considering future
project plans, solutions might
be designed for a single
purpose.

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This workshop is broken into five modules to optimize

application development processes
Module

Name

Goal

List of Deliverables

Design High Level

Solutions

Build a high level design with

business and regulatory
compliance.

Design Detailed
Solution
Components

Create a detailed design that

maps to business objectives,
infrastructure, and processes.

Detailed Design Document

App. Development Maturity Assessment

High Level Design Roles and Responsibilities
High Level Design Document
Business Requirements and Use Case Documents
Compliance Check
Stakeholders High Level Design Approval
o
o
o
o
o
o

UI Wireframes
UI Storyboards
Business Rules and Process Diagrams
Application, Data, UI, and Solution Integration Diagrams
Data Definitions and Entity-Relationship Diagrams (ERD)
Data Flow Diagrams

Detailed Design Roles and Responsibilities

3

Manage
Application
Development

Find the optimal team

structure and development
approach to execute on the
high level design.

Team Structure for Applications and Project Teams

Development Model
Levels of Development Quality and Throughput
Audit Trails

Test Solution
Components

Build an effective QA plan

that addresses all known
risks.

QA Roles and Responsibilities

Test Cases
Testing Risk/Mitigation Log

Review and
Communicate
with Stakeholders

Build the project schedule

and communicate it with
stakeholders.

Application Development Roles and Responsibilities

Application Development Project Schedule

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1.0 Design High Level Solutions

1.1 Get the Right

People Involved

1.2 Establish a High

Level Design
Specification

1.3 Optimize for

Business and
Regulatory
Compliance

1.4 Obtain
Stakeholder
Approval

Involve Business and

IT Stakeholders in the
Design Process

Determine the Right

Approach to Design
Creation

Understand the
Importance of
Compliance Checks

Obtain Stakeholder
Approval for the High
Level Design

Understand Resource
Constraints and
Develop Mitigation
Strategies

Understand the
Design Process

Mitigate the
Difficulties of
Managing
Compliance

Ensure Stakeholders
are Kept Up-to-Date
with Project Progress

Build the High Level

Project Team

Determine the Right

Approach to Design
Documentation
Build the High Level
Design
Specify the Impact of
the Design on Other
Projects

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2.0 Design Detailed Solution Components

2.1 Design the

Business Rules

2.2 Design the User

Interface

2.3 Design the

System Flow and
Integrations

2.4 Bring the Design

Together

Design Process Flows

Create Wireframes

Design Application
Integrations

Document the
Detailed Design

Map Business Rules

Create Storyboards

Design Data
Integrations

Follow Best Practices

Build an EntityRelationship Diagram

Classify Data

Understand the Risks

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3.0 Manage Application Development

3.1 Establish Team

Structure

3.2 Select an
Appropriate
Development
Method

Optimize the
Application
Development
Organization
Structure

Evaluate Agile vs.

Waterfall

Optimize the Structure

of Individual Project
Teams

Pick the Right Mix

3.3 Manage
Development Roles,
Responsibilities,
and Risks

3.4 Manage
Development Quality
and Throughput

Understand the Roles

and Responsibilities
of Developers and
Managers

Understand the
Factors Affecting
Quality and
Throughput

Understand and
Mitigate Key
Development Risks

Leverage Software
Tools to Improve
Quality and
Throughput

Communicate and
Track Changes

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4.0 Test Solution Components

4.1 Leverage QA
Best Practices

4.2 Build a QA
Project Plan

Understand the Role

of the QA

Develop the QA Plan

Understand the
Different Types of
Testing

Build Test Cases and

Scripts

Determine When to
Use Each Type of Test
Review Other QA Best
Practices

4.3 Execute the QA

Plan

Track Bugs and

Defects Going
Forward

Establish
Responsibilities for
the QA Plan
Understand and
Mitigate the
Execution Risks

Evaluate Testing Tools

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5.0 Review and Communicate with Stakeholders

5.1 Review the Final

Deliverables

5.2 Communicate
with Stakeholders

Summarize Design,
Development
Process, and QA
Decisions

Communicate the
Project Schedule

Review the Lessons

Learned

Communicate the
Process Optimization
Effort

Review the
Organization
Communication Plan

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Application Development Workshop Deliverables

This workshop will help you build the following deliverables:

Data Flow and Entity Diagrams

Wireframes and Storyboards

Use Cases

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Assess the maturity of your application development process

Leverage Info-Techs Application Development Maturity Tool to identify any
key gaps in your current development process.

1. Evaluate the
Current State of Your
Development Process

2. Identify the Gaps

3. Create a Plan to Fill

The Gaps (With This
Workshop)

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Describe your development process

Lack of
business
availability

Whiteboard

Example:

Represents
possible
issues for
discussion

Business
Analyst
Architect

Conflicting
requirements

Elicit
Elicit
Business
Business
Requirements
Requirements

Lack of cross
domain expertsCreate High

Create High
Level
Level Design
Design

Elicit
Elicit
Use
Use
Cases
Cases

Generate
Generate
Functional
Functional
Requirements
Requirements

Create
Create
Detailed
Detailed
Design
Design

Receive
Receive
Design
Design
Approval

Stalemate from
business
stakeholders
Lack of CI or
automated
builds

No standards
No

Developer
Does not mirror
production

IT

Deploy
Deploy
QA
QA
Version
Version

Tester
High incident
rate

Support

Create
Create
Test
Test
Strategy
Strategy
Accept
Accept
support
requests
requests

Create
Create
Unit
Unit
Tests

Create
Create
Code
Code

Receive
Receive
Design
Design

Manual testing
only

Yes
Yes

Application
stack conflict

Tests
pass?

Redirect
Redirect
to
resolver
resolver

Build
Build QA
QA
Version
Version

Deploy
Deploy
Prod
Prod
Version
Version

No

Execute
Execute
Test
Test
Cases
Cases

Log
incident
incident

Tests
pass?

Update
Update
incident
incident

Yes

Inform
Stakeholders
Stakeholders

Close
Close
incident
incident

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Testing at multiple points during the Software Development

Lifecycle
PHASE:

Development

Testing

Code Review

Functional Tests

Unit Test

Integration Test

TESTS:

Staging

Production

Security and
Access Tests
Regression Test

Performance
Test
UAT
Ongoing UI
Testing

DATA
GATHERED:

Test Data

Test Data

Mirror or
Production Data

Production Data

Converted Data

ROLE
INVOLVED:

Developer

QA
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Application Development Workshop:

Built on World Class Research, Experience, and Standards

Ability to design High Level Solutions

Strategic roadmap of application development process

Research Process

Tools & Templates

Team with over 30 years experience.

Over 2,800 hours of research.
Based on primary and in-field
research.

COBIT Driven

Grounded in open international

standards.

Application Development Maturity

Tool
Project Status Communication
Worksheet
Resource Requisition Template
Business Rules Template
Application Development Audit Trail
Template
Defect Reporting Template
Application Development Roles and
Responsibilities Management Tool
More.
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