Enhancing Customer Partnership Through Requirements Framework
Deepa K. Vijayamma, Nora Yamini David · 2010
iGATE, the first integrated Technology & Operations (iTOPS) organization in India had a steady climb in the customer's value chain in terms of penetrating deeper (instead of wider) into customer portfolio. More and more customers were proposing `partnership' model. One of the focus areas in partnership was `requirements engineering' as the challenges faced in this area were affecting both iGATE and its customers. In spite of iGATE having established process and tools, some of the critical projects experienced cost and schedule overruns due to missed requirements. While the conventional Root Cause Analysis (RCA) approach resulted in incremental benefits, an integrated approach to tackle the challenge was the need of the hour. The paper portrays how a robust Requirements Framework was evolved over a period of one and half years crossing several milestones on its journey such as integration of training and technology, project execution and facilitation. The results of implementation was (i) increase in completely owned development projects from 2% to 12%, (ii) increase in resources engaged in requirements phase of project from 8% to 24% and (iii) improved annual organization level customer satisfaction results. Growing by its strength, the organization at present is not only leveraging the requirements framework for successful execution of projects within iGATE. Best practices of the framework are adopted by our customers and the framework is customized as “customer-iGATE specific joint requirements framework”.customer partnership