How to align customer success with software supplier's success?

Outsourcing technology Squads brings significant challenges, with performance being a major concern for technology and product leadership.

BossaBox has found a way to offer contractual guarantees without compromising agility, security, and project performance. In BossaBox's view, performance goes beyond simply delivering tasks; it means efficiency, quality, and effectiveness. In other words, it means delivering the right thing, at the right time, and in the right way.

To ensure performance, BossaBox adopts a dual strategy, combining quantitative and qualitative analyses.

Quantitative Approach

In the quantitative approach, BossaBox uses DORA metrics, developed by the DevOps Research and Assessment Institute and currently administered by Google:

1. Lead Time: Time for a change to be implemented in production.
   
   

2. Deployment Frequency: Regularity of implemented updates.
   
   

3. Change-Failure Rate: Rate of failures in changes implemented in production.
   
   

4. Time to Restore Service: Speed to recover from incidents in production.

These metrics allow comparing performance between different teams, assigning a performance score based on the four metrics, which underpins BossaBox's guarantee.

Quantitative Analysis

For qualitative analysis, BossaBox uses Developer Research, which assesses developer satisfaction, interaction efficiency, and collaboration quality. Factors such as satisfaction, well-being, communication, and collaboration in the team are evaluated, helping to understand and improve the human and social factors that impact performance.

Performance Guarantee in Practice

If the Squad achieves two consecutive sprints of low performance after the ramp-up period, credits equivalent to the number of underperforming sprints will be granted at no additional cost to the client.

Quality and Efficiency Management in Deliveries

BossaBox uses tools to collect, integrate, and visualize data, creating a dynamic control panel monitored by the team of Specialists, who continuously optimize performance and ensure adherence to all aspects of the contract. This panel allows a proactive approach, reducing reaction time and minimizing the impacts of issues.

Ongoing analysis of DORA metrics and Developer Research feedback, along with advanced monitoring capabilities through Tech Capabilities, enables quick identification and resolution of any problems before they become significant bottlenecks.

The DORA Core Model highlights the interaction between DORA metrics and Tech Capabilities, fundamental skills for effective implementation of DevOps culture. These capabilities are crucial for superior software delivery performance and for improving the developer experience. Tech Capabilities act as a guide to identify the root causes of performance issues and include:

• Code Maintainability: Ease of maintaining and modifying code.
  
  

• Documentation Quality: Practices ensuring high-quality documentation.
  
  

• Test Automation: Development of automated tests throughout the software's lifecycle.
  
  

• Continuous Delivery and Continuous Integration: Continuous implementation of new features and code integration in an automated manner.
  
  

• Database Change Management: Efficient management of database changes.
  
  

• Deployment Automation: Automation of deployment processes to production.
  
  

• Flexible Infrastructure: Ability to adapt and scale the infrastructure as needed.
  
  

• Loosely Coupled Architecture: Designing systems with flexible coupling.
  
  

• Monitoring and Observability: Robust monitoring and observability.

Performance Guarantee Differentiator

BossaBox stands out by aligning incentives directly with customer success. Unlike the traditional model of charging per hour, which can encourage overcharging and discourage prompt deliveries, BossaBox chooses an adaptive approach.

It also avoids the closed-scope model, which, despite seeming secure, is not flexible enough to respond to changes in needs, resulting in solutions that do not meet dynamic market expectations.

BossaBox adopts a strategy that allows adjustments and realignments as necessary, ensuring that deliveries are made with speed and quality, accurately reflecting the success of the partnership.