Accelerating Software Delivery Efficiency for a Mid-Sized Bank

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

A mid-sized bank partnered with DefineX to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its software delivery processes. They had identified several key challenges impacting IT performance and overall business agility:

• Slow Time to Market: Development cycles lagged behind industry benchmarks, limiting the client’s ability to respond quickly to business needs. The underlying causes had yet to be clearly identified.
• Delivery Throughput Constraints: While IT output was viewed as below expectations, there was limited visibility into bottlenecks and their broader operational implications.
• Inconsistent Delivery Quality: Variability across various stages of the software development life cycle impacted delivery consistency. Quality issues existed, but root causes were not clearly identified.
• Team Engagement Uncertainity: Despite active efforts, employee satisfaction in IT remained a concern, with limited insight into the underlying drivers.

HOW WE HELPED

DefineX applied a structured, four-phase methodology to diagnose challenges and design a roadmap for improving software delivery efficiency:

• Pre-Evaluation: Established baseline performance by defining key productivity metrics, deploying an employee experience survey, and analyzing audit insights. These inputs informed the engagement’s focus areas.
• Discovery: Collaborated with stakeholders to map the end-to-end development journey and gather pain points across business and IT units.
• Diagnosis: Facilitated cross-functional workshops to identify root causes of delivery inefficiencies. Defined SDLC health checks and formulated data-driven hypotheses for improvement.
• Planning and Prioritization: Converted findings into a prioritized backlog of initiatives, spanning quick wins and mid-term transformation opportunities. Defined ownership, success metrics, and implementation plans. A sustainable improvement structure was also proposed to maintain long-term momentum.

RESULTS ACHIEVED

DefineX structured the outcomes into 10 improvement projects and 1 transformation program, projected to unlock up to 30% of the client’s annual delivery capacity.

Targeted operational inefficiencies via 10 initiatives, which are expected to recover 12.5% of yearly capacity through faster and leaner delivery.

Addressing structural challenges across the SDLC through a transformation program, which is projected to contribute an additional 17.5% capacity gain.