In the diagram above you can clearly see that the IT organization created a rich and robust set of approval processes and committees to improve the quality of every change that goes into production. When this team needs to react quickly, they skip some of the manual review processes. This is a top-down driven solution to the problem since the executive leaders manage the risk with the business partners directly.
The table below is the best case scenario, without an executive override.
| Stage | Time Estimate |
| Prioritization Review | Twice a week |
| Supporting data request | 1 day |
| Estimation process & approval | 1 day |
| Solution Design & architectural approval | 1 day |
| Solution Development | 1 day – offshore team |
| COE Review and approval | 1 day – Automated static analysis for .Net and some Java |
| Functional testing | 1 day of spot testing manually in parallel4 hours for automation suite |
| Functional test review | Same day |
| Operational Readiness | 1 day for deployment + 1 day for testing |
| Deployment to production | 1 day |
| Total | 8-10 days |
However the default process for high priority items takes 4-6 weeks and normal workflow is 3-6 months if a change fits within a pre-approved and funded project. The resources required to manage the flow of work through the process is over 10% of the overall solution cost. The queues are always at maximum so variability in the workload is minimized.
This is a very sharp contrast to Agile solution development.
David Guimbellot, Area Vice President of Test Data Management & Continuous Delivery at Orasi Software
