- Background: HP FutureSmart Firmware Case Study
- Cost and Cycle-Time Drivers Prior to HP FutureSmart Firmware
- Value Proposition of Re-Architecting the HP FutureSmart Firmware and Processes
- Establish Development Objectives from the Business Analysis
- Summary
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Establish Development Objectives from the Business Analysis
As we started out on our agile journey, we translated this business picture of “where we were spending our money” and “what the business needed” into a clear set of firmware development objectives that we felt would close the gap between where we were and where we needed to be. Our goal was that these objectives would help unleash the product roadmap and enable innovation by reengineering the code and development processes:
- Create a stable application code base that is always close to ready for release.
- Automate tests and run a full set of regression tests every night.
- Automate the integration process, including autoreverting any code that is not up to par.
- Significantly reduce the work needed to get new products working with high quality and out the door to the market.
- Re-architect to remove product differences, enabling one branch for all products (even refreshes of released products).
- Improve developer productivity by a factor of 10 (build times, streamlined processes).
- Create a common development environment so engineers can easily help across teams.
- Reset expectations and reduce feature estimation activities (commit by delivering).
There was a final consideration in determining how to go forward: Every team or business must not only step back and ask about resource allocation and value-add, but also about the capacity of the organization to absorb change. How much change can the organization handle, how fast, and how many ideas can be driven from your position in the organization? This example involves a large amount of change over a long time period with a big team. Agile transformation can only happen as quickly as your organization has the capacity to invest and is ready to embrace significant change along with that investment. It also matters how influential the thought leaders are in your organization. The final chapter goes much more into the best way to start, but no matter what, make sure you start with the items that will give the biggest bang for the buck and are appropriate for your organizational influence and leverage.
In the following chapters, we will share our experiences and changes that enabled the following results in hopes that it will inspire your organization to start your journey toward transforming your business:
- 2008 to present overall development costs reduced by 40%
- Number of programs under development increased by 140%
- Development costs per program down 78%
- Firmware resources now driving innovation increased by a factor of 8 (from 5% working on new features to 40%)