Role of Delivery Excellence

Nearly every organization has “Delivery Excellence” function, in one form or the other. The similarity across most of these organizations’ is in form structure and implementation of this function, i.e. more towards delivery processes. In other words processes originated because of need of some quality standard, be it CMMi, ISO or any other.

The problem with this narrowly defined objective is, that it seeks incremental improvements, which over a period of time, reach their limit. In addition, these standards are no longer the differentiators, rather those have become thresholds for one to proclaim “me too”. As we all know, no two organizations assessed at CMMi L5 or at any other epitome of any other quality standard, operate at same level.

So, the question arises, if we all know this, then why do we define and confine ourselves to said objective for “Delivery Excellence”. May be, we are diluting the importance and meaning of the word “Excellence”.

The way I understand it, a “Delivery Excellence” function, or for that matter any “Excellence” function should be run as “Center of Excellence (CoE)”. What it essentially means, it should have a Vision, Charter, Measurements, Resources, Policies, and Deliverables. As in absence of these, those might start on a right path; however, lose the direction and hence the impact, that these otherwise would have succeeded to create.

The “Delivery Excellence” in particular, should define means to,

1. Achieve excellence in customer satisfaction, and hence, help organization in retention / gaining repeat business
2. Help organization by being a strategic partner through consulting mindset

The two point approach is simple to remember, and yet effective to propel an organization to a level of maturity, where it can really differentiate itself from the rest.
The underlying theme behind these two points is as follows;

1. Think of a customer, let that be the focal point, and drive initiatives for improvement through Voice of Customer (VoC)
2. Create excellence in pre-sales through delivery, not only through optimizations alone, rather look at new avenues to achieve those, with better quality, shorter turnaround time, better predictability, effective utilization of resources through lesser and lesser “muda”, and hence lesser cost. Less cost should be the end result (if at all), and not the only end objective
3. Look at capability maturity of knowledge workforce, how can they be better equipped to deliver, what are the new trends in technology and solutioning, which they need to undergo, how can we self-sustain the “Self-Development” instead of being forced through policies and punitive appraisal systems, how do we study and analyze the market trends and adapt to change, how do we continuously lookout for opportunities to create new markets….the list is endless

The point is, look beyond incremental efficiencies in a limited segment, rather if need be, overhaul the system to align with today’s dynamic world.
For example,

1. Understand the organization’s vision and mission and define excellence around it
2. Create new delivery / pricing models / methodologies to serve untapped market
3. Define measures to enhance the delivery capability (resources, tools, processes); do not get confined to processes alone
4. Define measures to self-sustain the ‘Self-Development’. Instead of creating expensive, hard to maintain, and prone to prejudice and leakage of sensitive data around “Capability Maturity Matrix” for roles, and resources, rather define the minimum standards the resources across roles, need to achieve at various intervals
5. Create measures to eliminate the “muda” at every step of delivery; not through extensive exclusive checks, rather through inbuilt correction mechanism. For example, CI/TDD being part of the way of development, instead of pounding code and claiming it to be “done”
6. Create measures to drive accountability across roles / functions, such that bottlenecks become visible to naked eye
7. Assessments are not punitive, rather inclusive, i.e. if someone wants to operate at a certain level, as long organization has the need, let the person excel at that level. There should not be any need for promoting and then failing a person. This way, you are helping people excel in their respective roles, and yet there are no failures, thereby increasing employee satisfaction
8. Invest in your own readiness to being Business Architect to Business Process Specialist, to Subject Matter Expert in given field(s). The people in delivery should reach out to you for guidance, advice, and help for recovery. Instead of you being the “gatekeeper” of process implementation
9. …

This may not be an exhaustive list, and should not be either, as “Excellence” does not have a defined form, and will change along with environment that we operate in. A true “Delivery Excellence” organization operates like a CoE, and compliance is not what it seeks for, rather it is given. If need be, create a separate function for compliance; if there had been some cultural challenges, until those have been overcome.

Can the role of a “Sales Excellence” be any different? Not really, the basic premise does not change. That is, you have to work to “Excel”, and not be satisfied with incremental gains, through marginal efficiencies.