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Software services was a fast growing industry in India in 2005 as companies around the world were increasingly more willing to buy customised software systems rather than build them themselves. Wipro Technologies work focused on non-Indian companies based outside of India with its customers outsourcing and offshoring the work given to Wipro. Wipros large global clients tended to hire Wipro for big projects and local IT companies for smaller ones, creating disparity in the solutions architected and therefore dissonance between units of the company across the world.
Wipro implemented the factory model, which allowed it to consolidate the initial steps of engagement and offer a streamlined process for completion of small-scale projects for large customers. Parallel processes were combined into a single stream. Incoming projects were assigned to a predefined process Ð- demand management, centralised engineering and architecture, core factory processes and infrastructure consolidation Ð- as these projects required similar technical or functional solutions. Demand management was automated by funnelling work of similar nature and functional areas into a common demand management function. Core architecture identified best processes, improvements and innovations to create templates for possible projects for standardisation. Standard tasks, knowledge reuse and code-reuse were incorporated into the Ðdesign, Ðbuild, Ðtest and Ðdeploy steps. Common hardware infrastructure was used to standardise development, testing and deployment platforms. Software licenses were reused and infrastructure support teams optimised. A centralised capacity planning model and cost allocation mechanisms reduced expenditure.
Lean manufacturing aims to break down processes to value adding and non-value adding processes so that the non-value adding steps can be minimised and waste eliminated, thus improving quality and production time while reducing cost. It can be applied to software production by doing a requirement review, eliminating unnecessary requirements, substituting mechanical and electrical components with software and eliminating costly software components. Thus, components can be reused. At Wipro, the employees can work in a line system like in a factory with the process flowing step by step down the line. Even paperwork can be done in a production fashion. Response time can be measured and program redesigned so that productivity can be improved. During the review and redesign stages, non-value adding features can be removed so that the software is improved. Rework for defects correction can be reduced.
Six sigma is a statistical measure to show how defect free a process is. It can be applied to software production. “Voice of the client” and “quality function deployment” are relevant measures