Achieve High ROI from Integrated ALM With the Kovair Omnibus Platform

Achieve High ROI from Integrated
ALM With the
Kovair Omnibus Middleware












Kovair Software, Inc.
4699 Old Ironsides Drive,
Unit 190,
Santa Clara, CA 95054
Sales: 1.408.262.0200 Extn. 1
sales@kovair.com
www.kovair.com

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Document Version History
Release
Date
Reason
Ver 1.0
05/25/2011
Initial Release





KovairSoftware,Inc.(c)2011

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Achieve High ROI from Integrated ALM with the Kovair Omnibus Middleware

What is the Kovair Omnibus? Kovair offers a SOA based Bus Infrastructure around which multiple tools performing
multiple aspects of the ALM functions can be integrated to form a common repository of data with each tool having
bi-directional data transfer and access capabilities for the repository. This allows any organization to achieve a
completely integrated ALM infrastructure which has been referred more recently as ALM 2.0. A graphical
representation of the Omnibus is provided in the following diagram.


This capability has been production tested with the integration of 15 different ALM Development tools at a very large
IT Services Company with hundreds of projects and several thousand developers using it. Thus the concerns of
security, scalability, performance over the web for multiple location development have all been successfully
addressed.
The qualitative and financial benefits that are enumerated in the following sections have all been derived from this
experience and provide a good guide for what can be expected in a given situation that may have its differences
based on the number of tools, locations and the number of people involved in the projects.


KovairSoftware,Inc.(c)2011

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BenefitsofOmnibusIntegratedDevelopmentEcosystem:
1. Seamless flow of artifacts from one stage of development to the other speeding up cycle times
2. Synchronization of artifacts in real-time within the tools without any manual effort that brings cost savings
3. Enacting Integrated and Synchronized Engineering and Quality Processes for Development that reduce bugs
and rework with associated cost reductions.
4. Mapping and Traceability of deliverables across the entire Software Development Lifecycle that enhances
productivity by reducing confusion and reductions in meetings, phones and travel
5. Consolidated Reporting & Dashboard - enables better management decisions for corrective actions in a
prompt manner thus improving product deliveries and time to market
6. Enabling Global collaboration with 100% web based tools that are integrated but physically at different
locations based on which functions are carried out with minimum meetings and travel
7. Instant visibility across projects and stages - information is not locked in individual tools but in a single
consolidated data repository for every group to review and act upon
8. Reduced software delivery cycles with decreased inter-stage transition times
9. Early Warning for Release Instability eliminating or reducing potential delays
10. Better Change Management & Impact Analysis - embrace change with lower risk and cost

Financial Impact of some of the above benefits are quantified below based on customer inputs from some of
their experiences. It must be pointed out that each customer may experience different results based on their
starting level of efficiency, productivity and quality compared to some other. However, the following is a
good guideline for estimating cost benefits and computing ROI for a typical development environment.

1. Developer productivity gain is estimated at 7 to 8%. This improvement for a normal average salary for
developers based on their locations can provide the dollar savings for the entire organization or the project
for which the integration activities are applicable.
2. Quality gains and Defect Reductions are estimated at 8%. In this case the cost of quality for testing and bug
fixing for a given development group can be improved by this percentage and based on the average size of
the groups and their average compensation and overheads, appropriate savings in dollars can be easily
arrived at.
3. Time saved from meetings, phone calls and travel - conservatively figured at 2.5 hours per week per person
which amounts to 125 hours per year at 50 working weeks or is 125/2000 or 6.25% of total hours worked per
person per year. This can be converted into appropriate dollar savings for a given average payroll dollars in
an organization.
4. Time to Market Benefits - according to the McKenzie group a 6 month advantage in a product release can
result in an 18 month advantage for revenue generation. The estimates we have indicate a 15 to 18% gain
in time to market or early release of the application being developed. For an in house project, how to
monetize this for ROI computations will depend on how the users are being charged for such projects and
thus it is left to the user to determine the dollar benefits of this gain.
5. Reduced number of other tools licenses due to all the data coming into a single repository - the estimate of
this number can vary from one situation to the other and will vary with the total number of different
integrations and how some of the project and other managers are required to get licenses for tools that they
do not normally use but need to access only for review of data or reports or task status. Kovair Omnibus with
its single repository of data and log in capabilities for different users can reduce or eliminate the need for
such extra license purchases. The estimate is that a reduction of up to 5% in the number of these licenses
will be achievable and the cost savings will depend on the cost of these licenses.

The above savings add up to more than 20% of a typical project cost and therefore are significant for any
organization to adopt such an integrated solution.

KovairSoftware,Inc.(c)2011

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Kovair plans to update this information on an ongoing basis as more customer experience is gathered on the above
improvements as time progresses.
Besides the above qualitative and quantitative benefits information, Kovair has compiled a list of qualitative
advantages for each functional role or group that are presented in the following paragraphs. These will serve as
very good examples for various segments of the organization to comprehend the qualitative benefits of integration
and then follow the individual segments for quantitative analysis as applicable.
General benefits for the entire Organization
1. Enable global collaboration
2. Instant visibility across projects and stages
3. Better able to see others' issues
4. Less finger-pointing with more transparency
5. Easier on-boarding of corporate acquisitions with multiple tools
6. Early warning of release instability
7. Insight across silos (intra-project, inter-project)
8. Able to keep using existing tools, or migrate a subset
9. Can quantify impact of initiatives
10. Continuous improvement

Product Management
1. Traceability of requirements and use cases through the project
2. "I know my requirements are getting built, and when"
3. Better able to understand impacts of release re-planning
4. What will changes in Requirements affect?
Development
1. Plug-ins to IDE provide links to ALM "in place"
2. Traceability back to requirements - forward to unit test
3. Automation of unit testing
4. Know what % of code is tested
5. Know what files are being tested, and traceability of defects to files
6. Make laborious work easier and/or eliminate duplication of work
7. Are features "ready for handoff?"
Development Lead/Front line manager
1. Continuous
project
status
2. Team and individual performance visibility
3. Location performance
4. Percentage of code tested
5. Code quality metrics
6. Impact of change on release
7. Source
metrics
8. Rate of churn of code
9. Task
prioritization
10. Impact of support issues on teams
11. Build information
12. Project Health


KovairSoftware,Inc.(c)2011

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Configuration Management
1. Traceability
2. Requirements-code-build-test statistics and metrics
3. Automation of Build-Deploy-Test cycle
SQA
1. Test coverage statistics
2. Tracking of issue over time
a. Incoming vs. fix
b. Source of issues over time
c. Issue severity over time
d. Issue disposition over time -analysis of triage decisions
e. Able to detect convergence, or lack thereof
3. Build status - content, defects
4. Enables risk-based testing
5. Tight linkage to support issues
6. Traceability of testing back to use cases, requirements, design, other artifacts
7. Productivity
measurement
a. Team
b. Location
c. Individual
Project Management
1. Benefits are similar to lead/manager
2. More objective project status
3. Gauging impact of proposed releases
4. Excellent real time reports and dashboards
Support
1. Pre-release assessment of support impact - is this a hot release?"
2. Better linkage between support and sustaining
3. Less copy/paste when escalating issues
4. Able to track issues from inception to resolution and testing
5. Reporting on escalated issues
6. Better automation of patch/release - less human error
Execs/Upper Management
1. Actionable information flows upward
2. Better able to inform peers of progress/status
3. Early warning of trouble - fewer surprises
4. Reporting consistency across projects and disciplines
5. Very specific and real time dash board reports
6. Multiple reports can be generated at will depending on the need

With all of the above information in this document, Kovair hopes that it will allow a prospective customer to create
proper ROI and management justification to procure the Kovair Omnibus Middleware Platform and associated
capabilities. Why struggle through the lack of consolidated development project data if an Integrated ALM or ALM
2.0 can be achieved today?




KovairSoftware,Inc.(c)2011

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Current availability of Omnibus Adapters





KovairSoftware,Inc.(c)2011

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