The Time Is Now for a Holistic Approach to IT Delivery Assurance

“To truly achieve IT delivery assurance, companies must empower program managers and delivery managers with a dedicated tool for introducing orchestrated, end-to-end control of the delivery process and visibility into project statuses, delivery progress and software quality across the entire organization.”

For years, project management offices have gotten by with their project portfolio management (PPM) tools. However, times are changing and in the increasingly software-driven business world, these tools just aren’t enough to handle the demands being put on delivery managers.

If developers have a litany of tools to choose from and software testers can track test cases and manage defects with dedicated tools, project management teams should also have a dedicated tool to support rapid delivery. In our latest free whitepaper — Achieving IT Delivery Assurance Through Effective Enterprise Release Management — we explain the need for dedicated enterprise release management tools for project management teams.

Where Typical Approaches to Delivery Assurance Get Stuck

The general components of delivery processes are pretty universal, but one piece in particular causes challenges that are sparking the need for enterprise release management tools. The final stage,  where individual business requirement projects are dropped into the IT delivery factory for end-to-end coding and testing, is problematic under the demands of a modern enterprise.
At this stage, the gap between high-level project managers and the lower-level developers and testers is most apparent. PPM tools have sufficed in unifying these two levels of the delivery assurance picture, but only because waterfall demands have eased the strain between them. Now, the gap between each level is widening and there’s no way for project managers to keep track of project statuses without ineffective (and costly) in-person meetings.

To avoid wasting money on ineffective meetings, implement a dedicated ERM solution for your project management team.

The 5 Tenets of IT Delivery Assurance and Their Impact on Visibility

When it comes to achieving IT delivery assurance, the name of the game is visibility. Without a dedicated tool, project management teams have no way to see the entire software release landscape and, as a result, projects are delayed or flawed. When searching for an ERM solution, ensure your investment supports these 5 tenets of delivery assurance:

• The Release Plan: Bridge the gap between business demands and delivery processes.

• Governance Gates: Don’t let agile development trump quality assurance.

• The Environment Plan: Properly manage your finite test environment resources.

• Deployment Management: Keep each step of the deployment on schedule.

• Quality Assurance: Compile all testing data in a central location for improved visibility.

In  Achieving IT Delivery Assurance Through Effective Enterprise Release Management, you’ll discover the differences between a project management life without visibility and one with a comprehensive perspective over the entire release portfolio — and learn how a dedicated project management tool satisfies each of the 5 tenets of delivery assurance.