There’s a rule of thumb in IT: if you can reduce the time from concept to fully functioning solution you save much more than just time. For example, your return on investment comes much sooner thanks to that time you’ve saved. Or you could use the extra hours to deliver even better work and boost quality. But how do you effectively reduce the “time to deliver”?
In our previous blogs, we discussed a number of persistent problems that on the one hand significantly slow down the development process and on the other hand reduce the quality of your work. One of these is the dreaded “rework” — when you’re forced to reprogram software that wasn’t delivered entirely correctly in the first place. Another common problem is “busy work” — time-consuming operational tasks that add little or no value to the business in general or the IT department in particular.
In addition, there is the terror-inducing phenomenon of “downtime” — precious time lost to system failure, which often leads to financial loss and a reduction in quality. If you can limit downtime and also reduce the risk of downtime, you’ll save both time and money while also protecting quality.
Prevention and cure
The good news is that there are concrete, effective solutions to all these problems today. As with previous issues we’ve examined, many of these are preventive solutions. Think of automating IT tasks that offer little or no added value, for example. Or working with short “feedback loops” so you can adjust the process and quickly correct any errors before they escalate or become ingrained. In addition, there are clever solutions available for automatic self-healing and rapid disaster recovery, which allow you to address a problem and accelerate recovery.
You can tackle all these problems — from rework and busy work to downtime — together by investing in a single well-designed package of solutions, which will ultimately also significantly reduce your “time to deliver”. Over time the benefits pay for themselves in time, money, quality, or all three, creating a virtuous cycle.
So the more you invest in automation, the faster you can work, the higher the quality of your work, the less rework you have to do, the shorter the recovery time in the event of a system failure, and so on and so forth. This self-reinforcing effect ultimately ensures that the return on investment will compound over time.
Breaking the vicious circle
Many IT departments already struggle to find the time to perform their normal, everyday tasks. For them the challenge isn’t just improving efficiency, it’s making the time to actually automate IT processes, for example. This situation can quickly turn into a downward spiral that means nothing at all gets done.
The key is to break this vicious circle and turn the downward spiral into an upward trend — and technology can certainly help you achieve this. At BRYXX, we’re focusing on an internal developer platform so that we can offer developers a centralized self-service interface that removes the complexity of their software development, allowing them to fully concentrate on the development itself and delivering all the functionality they need.
In the past, developers were forced to deal with all kinds of supporting operational tasks on the sidelines of their work. Now they can focus on their core tasks of writing and testing high-quality code. The result is more productive, higher-performing and, above all, happier developers.