EXCEED

IMPROVING PRODUCTIVITY & RELIABILITY

IN
DELIVERY OF SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS

PRESENTATION BY GROUP 4
•RITAM MONDAL 2111116
•V VENKATESAN 2111141
•SUHAS T G 2111140
•VAIBHAV KHANDELWAL 2111142
•VARTIKA SRIVASTAVA 2111143
•GIRIJAPRATHA S 2111135
 CASE OVERVIEW

Exceed Communications LLC (ECL) is a mid-sized hardware and software services company
which provides techno-business solutions customized to client’s needs. The case talks about a
managerial challenge faced by ECL in determining the course of action that needs to be taken to
address certain productivity and quality concerns raised by one of their clients, H&K.
As the managing director of the company, Karamath investigates the cause of the poor quality and
under-productivity of a project team, he receives a plethora of equally plausible causes along with
supporting data. The challenge he is presented with is to sift through the myriad problems and
causes in a systematic manner to identify the best course of action.
Q1. What is the nature of customer complaints received by ECL? How do you think they should go
about addressing these problems?

Exceed was facing complaints related to
quality & Productivity. Some of them are
mentioned below:
Too many errors
ECL is renowned for its reliable deliveries and
had always met the expectation of clients. It
can take the following steps to address the
concerns raised by the client:
• Check if the complaints are genuine

• Analyse system test execution statistics &

Working too slowly
check for processing timing

Excess staffing
• Check variability to find the occurrence of
breach

Slow progress • Check if occurrences can be considered as

outliers/exceptions

Inconsistent productivity • Focus on certain internal factors

Q2. Given the list and nature of problems reported, which of the problems do you think ECL needs to
address on a priority basis?

•The various problems reported are:

• Complicated SQL code to identify relevant data
• Delay at the end of Development team causing delay in the work of testing team
• Latency in network
• Manual testing
• Distraction & shirking

Since System testing receives the greatest number of complaints as it involves issues of slow
teamwork, high error rate, excess staffing, communication problems, and lack of domain
knowledge, ECL needs to address this concern on a priority basis.
 Q3. Is the system testing process under control as portrayed by Aslam? What are your assessments and
recommendations?

X-bar chart, shows that the productivity level on 12th Jan was significantly R-bar chart reflects that all points lie within the UCL and LCL. However,
low and below the LCL and hence requires further attention and actions. majority points lie below the R-bar and hence is indicative of a pattern that
needs to be checked.

The issue of identification of suitable test data that requires complex SQL codes and long times in data entry in the manual
testing process would have affected all data points. Though we can see from the X- bar graph that only one point is below
LCL line. Hence, we can say that the delay in software package deployment by 2 hours has affected the productivity.
To avoid this, we can take certain steps:
• Close monitoring of customer testing software launch can be done.
• Introduction of KPIs for development team based on timely deployment.
Q4. Is network latency a significant reason for under-productivity? If yes, then what is your assessment
on the improvement of productivity, if network performance was improved?
• Higher the latency, lower the number of system tests that can be run in the client environment.
• On analyzing X bar chart and R chart for network response times, we do not see any day’s network
response being an outlier
• However, we observe that whenever the response time is greater than 225 milliseconds, the number of tests
getting executed going down considerably.
• On 12th January 2017, the system tests executed were below the lower control limit.
• On the same day, we observe the mean latency of the day to be the highest at 228 seconds per request.
• Possible reason could be the firewall at the ECL/H&K timing out requests with response time greater than a threshold, thus
reducing the number of system tests being run in the client environment

Q5. What is your recommendation to Karamath on the next course of action he should take for
addressing the customer complaints?
• Reducing the complexity of the test data
• Improving SQL Code
• Implementing automated testing
• Use of cloud servers
• Implementing six sigma to reduce errors
THANK YOU!