Changes in the Environment
Due to the tremendous changes currently occurring in the Information Technology and Data Society (Cloud, IoT, Big Data, e-commerce, blockchain, AI, etc.), there is a disruption in how some companies are approaching their relationship with their technology providers.
A first effect of this new reality was the emergence of the “Manifesto for Agile Software Development” in 2001, which sought to methodologically capture the changes taking place in the ICT world. This manifesto has led to various methodologies that have evolved alongside the unstoppable improvement of software development, maintenance, and operations environments, which are highly integrated and automated under the DevOps paradigm.
In some sectors and among certain clients—not all (I will save this for another article on “hybrid” clients)—the need to transition to an agile world is not an option but a necessity for survival. In this article,
I deliberately exclude start-ups because I believe they should not compete in their market; rather, they create their own market. Additionally, cost-saving criteria are usually not among their priorities during the first years of operation.
True Partners
For new forms of ICT work to be successful and for clients to keep pace with their market, flexibility and agility must involve the entire company, including the Purchasing and HR departments.
Until recently, contracts with “technology providers” were historically based on a client- provider relationship (us and them) and included long and complex agreements with clauses specifying costs, deadlines, penalties, scope, SLAs, etc. Now, contractual relationships must align with the necessary flexibility to truly be “partners.”
Technology providers are transitioning into real partners, moving beyond the marketing and sales rhetoric that has always been used. This time it’s serious; it’s not just a commercial discourse of “we are partners”… while our contract has 100 pages.
Classic Collaboration Models
If we look at all the historical modalities of relationships between ICT service companies and their clients, we can always group them into the following major categories:
- Outsourcing of fixed-price projects with a fixed schedule, costs, and scope that are, in principle, immutable. This has always led to waterfall development methodologies (originating in 1970) and management methodologies (such as PMBOK from PMI®, Prince2, V-Model). The client/user participates in the initial phases of requirements definition and in the final phases of user testing and/or system acceptance. The rule is to not change the scope while the project is ongoing, which we have seen is often inconsistent with the times we live in today. The advantage for the client is securing deadlines and costs for a specific scope.
- Outsourcing of support and maintenance services based on response times, resolution times, SLAs, and other ITIL concepts. In these cases, micro and mini- tasks of software support and maintenance are managed with fixed and predictable costs for the client under a contractual umbrella lasting one or two years. The dimensions of scope and quality are based on measuring SLAs (response time, resolution time, reopenings, etc.) that must be managed with a monthly focus. The advantage for the client is outsourcing all maintenance tasks of their software applications to a specialised external company while they focus on their core business.
- Out staffing personnel selected and provided by the supplier under a time-and- materials (T&M) billing contract for an extended period of several years with exit clauses. The supervision and monitoring by the supplier are low and usually focus only on administrative oversight and behavioural aspects of the supplier’s personnel working at the client’s site. It is the client who organises the work of the supplier’s personnel, typically in agile or waterfall projects or in maintenance services. The advantage is flexibility and easy variation of staffing working in ICT.
The model of outsourcing complete projects at fixed prices and AMS services should only be applied under certain circumstances (to be discussed in future articles).
The out staffing model may also be suitable when the client has a mature (management and technology) and stable ICT department (without major transformation projects) looking for an expansion of their workforce, whether temporary or not.
Team as a Service (TaaS)
At Kiteris, we believe that collaboration with our clients who are in continuous transformation should be based on a new model that we can call Team as a Service (TaaS). This model allows the client to temporarily access additional resources that are trained and technologically expert, with technical supervision from our senior Architects and Service Managers.
The main difference from the pure out staffing model is that in the latter, individuals are subcontracted who are assumed to fit the profile demanded by the client. It is the client who validates during the work whether that person matches the necessary profile or not. In TaaS, it is Kiteris that validates and ensures that the person assigned to the work performs according to the client’s required profile, providing also the necessary follow-up and support for that person to perform adequately, and even suggesting personnel changes if their performance does not align with what the client requires.
What Kiteris offers in TaaS is assurance of service for a specific technical profile; it does not just provide the work of an individual. The client can entrust Kiteris with most of the technical oversight and quality of their work.
In this way, our clients achieve several clear benefits in addition to those of pure out staffing (flexibility and temporary increase in staffing):
- Additional Technical and Behavioural Supervision by Kiteris.
Greater ease of backup by Kiteris in case of illness or absence of the assigned person.
- Focus their personnel on functional analysis tasks that add greater value to their transformation projects.
At Kiteris, we already have several national and international clients with whom we are working under this model, primarily in the Industry, Media, and B2C sectors. We have success stories with both technical profiles (with support from the architect and Service Manager) and management profiles (with proactive support from a Managing Partner at Kiteris).
To assist and complement the use of this model for technical profiles, Kiteris established a near-shoring office in Cartagena (Region of Murcia) back in 2015, from which we concentrate all support for our clients so that we can work for them using the best tools and methodologies, with the high quality and experience of our team and competitive rates. We are certified in ISO 9001 at this office for maintenance, support, and small software development tasks. The personnel (architects, service managers, and developers) at the Cartagena office are already accustomed to working in TaaS with our clients from Barcelona, Madrid, LATAM, and Palma de Mallorca.
We believe that TaaS is the future model for executing projects in these rapidly changing and dynamic times: we assign expert technology personnel while the client focuses on functional tasks that add greater value.
