© 2015 Cognizant

© 2015 Cognizant

ZERO DEFECT INITIATIVE – QUALITY

INDEX GENERATOR

© 2015 Cognizant 1

Agenda

Cognizant Overview1

Cognizant Communications Business Unit2

Making our Client’s Business Stronger: What We Do3

Background & Objective4

Key Features5

Benefits of Implementation6

Challenges faced & Learnings from the Implementation7

Adoption Feasibility8

© 2015 Cognizant 2

Overview

Founded in 1994(CTSH, Nasdaq)

………………………..Headquarters

Teaneck, NJ……………….…….

20,000+ Projects in

40+ countries……………….…....……………………25+ Regional

Sales offices

1,255+

active customers…………….…...

Market Capital

Over $35 billion

. . .

.…………………..

.…………………….……..

75+ Global Delivery/

operations Centers in over

14 countries across 4

continents

.

As of December 31, 2014

© 2015 Cognizant 3

Cognizant Communications Business Unit

We collaborate with customers to build stronger businesses

Serve 7 of top 10 Communications Service Providers (Cable,

Wireless, Wireline) and Equipment Vendors

Strategic Partnership with Global IT Services, Product Vendors,

Network Equipment Providers and Consulting Organizations

Investments in R&D, Innovation, Mobility and IPTV Labs Non Linear

solutions such as Order Management as a Service (OMaaS)

Active members of leading industry bodies such as Tele Management

Forum and Quest Forum

Consistently top Customer satisfaction ratios and internal Business

results KPIs

Provide E2E OSS/BSS Solutions in Product Engineering, Consulting,

BPO and System Integration

Operate in 14 countries and engaged with over 50 customers

Wireless

Wireline

Broadband

Cable

Network

Equipment

Providers

Content &

IPTV

Communications

Business Unit

© 2015 Cognizant 4

Making our Client’s Business Stronger: What We Do

© 2015 Cognizant

Background & Objective

Our customer is one of the largest communication service providers in Germany with 10 million DSL subscribers. The core business of the customer is to provide broadband double and triple play products over the Gigabit Ethernet Platform. The quality of products determines their success in business. Hence, our quality becomes crucial to our success as well.

Three crucial success factors for delivery excellence include,

Strong Architectural and Design Skills

Excellent Development Skills

Powerful Testing Processes

There is no quantitative measure, which would clearly help individuals know their position and help them move forward, particularly when it comes to design , coding and testing skills.

The primary objective of this system is to

Bring in a scorecard system, to provide better learning plans for each and every individual.

Achieve Delivery Excellence through delivering work products with zero defects.

Keep the team motivated throughout, through weekly rewards program.

Good Design

Excellent Coding

Powerful Testing

Delivery Excellence

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© 2015 Cognizant

Key Features

Approach Towards the Initiative

The quantitative measure suggested is “Work Product Quality Index” for each associate.

The quality is measured across 3 different phases; Design, CUT and Pre-Integration Testing.

The applicable stage for each associate, is chosen based on the role performed in the week.

Every stage has defined sub parameters with different weightages based on the criticality of the parameter.

A score is assigned to each and every parameter and a cumulative score is arrived for each associate out of 10.

Each phase provides bonus score to associates, who display perfection towards the critical parameters.

The final release ZD score is calculated based on the average of weekly ZD scores.

Internal Review Comments

External Review Comments

Issues Tracked to closure

Usage of Review Checklist

Usage of TTRM

Timeliness of completion

C2 - Defects tracked to closure

Reviewer score

Internal Review Comments

External Review Comments

Test Coverage

Rule Compliance

Test Success

Usage of Review Checklist

Usage of TTRM

Timeliness of completion

C2 - Defects tracked to closure

Reviewer score

Pre-Integration Defects

Build Failure

Defect Count

Timeliness of Completion

DesignPre

IntegrationCut

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© 2015 Cognizant

Key Features

A dashboard (with various key parameters), where each individual can monitor his/her quality week on week, month on month and release after release.

The scorecard is generated based on the inputs from the reviewers on various artifacts.

End to End coverage of all phases involved in the project

Top 3 leaders are announced every week.

A ZD leader board is placed in the work place displaying leaders who have strong focus towards quality.

Overall Zero defect Leaders are announced towards the end of each release.

Leaders are rewarded weekly.

Zero Defect Scorecard

Zero Defect Leaderboard

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© 2015 Cognizant

Benefits of Implementation

The benefits offered by the best practice includes,

Continuous Reduction in Internal Defect Density & Improvement in Productivity

The benefits realized by our team translates into lesser IT spend for our customers, which are acknowledged by the customers themselves.

Sustainability - Steady increase in revenue and head count, since our engagement with the customer from 2011.

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© 2015 Cognizant

Benefits of Implementation

The benefits offered by the best practice includes,

Steady Increase in work share, that demonstrates the level of confidence, customers have on our work products.

Increased Work Share (Broader SDLC Spectrum)

Increased Work Share (Broader Functional Spectrum)

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2011 20142012 2013

Low level Design

Coding & Unit Testing

Low level Design

Coding & Unit Testing

Low level Design

Coding & Unit Testing

Low level Design

Coding & Unit Testing

High level Design High level Design

Pre-Integration Testing Pre-Integration Testing Pre-Integration Testing

Load and Performance

20142011 / 2012 2013

Fulfillment Fulfillment

Operation Support &

Readliness

Fulfillment

Operation Support &

Readliness

NetTrade

© 2015 Cognizant 10

Benefits of Implementation

Customer

Impact

All releases made so far, right from 2011 were successful and no incidents of post-production issues reported.

Improved productivity helps the team to deliver various value adds to the customer, in a step towards further optimizing the processes.

Cognizant’s approach in delivering value-add at very frequent interval, has brought in efficiency in operation at both Cognizant and customer ends. The benefits are in terms of enhanced product quality and cost reduction through productivity improvements. These benefits are realized by our customers and are very much appreciative on the pro-activeness shown by the Cognizant team.

Zero defect initiative has brought down the delivered defect density to as low as 0.03 per person day in the previous release. The density had come down by 25%, where it was 0.04 in the previous releases.

All these initiatives and strong focus on quality work products helped us achieve a CSS of 4.25 out of 5 in the feedback report from our customers.

© 2015 Cognizant

Benefits of ImplementationCustomer Impact – Appreciations Realizing Benefits

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Appreciation from Cognizant Leadership Team

Appreciation from the Project Manager from customer side

Appreciation from the Release Manager from customer side

The Zero Defect initiative shows the high expertise by Cognizant’s developers and managers looking at sustainable processes that are helpful for everybody in the team. This initiative is a really great motivation for the complete team, even for us.

From every important meeting, good and detailed minutes are created by Cognizant-colleagues that put together essential points. Even last 10 relase the motivation is still increasing !

Thanks for the strong effort and my congratulations to the ZD Winners for the Release [Release Number]!

[PM] had informed me on the ZD initiative after his return from his last visit. As the responsible Release Manager of [Release Number] I do very much appreciate the extra effort to eliminate any mistakes right at the implementation level. Thanks to the entire team for competing and ensuring best possible quality in the [Release Number] release.

For long I have wondered about feasibility of regularly benchmarking and reporting individual developer performance in a fair & objective manner.

Glad to hear from Partha today about our initial progress in implementation this is in [our project]. Tracking 22 parameters, aggregating and recognizing the top 3 developers weekly requires stretch effort (check xls)… worthwhile investment in projects where our customers demand exceptional quality and we wish to nurture a high performance team.

© 2015 Cognizant

Challenges faced & Learnings from the Implementation

Challenges faced during Implementation

Learnings from the Implementation

One initial challenge will be the additional time spent in collecting data for each individual team member to compute the quality index. More the team members, higher is the complexity.

Benefits overtake challenges – From our experience, it is worth to spend the additional time in computing the metrics, considering the benefits that can be reaped from the initiative.

Overcoming Challenges – The key to overcome the challenge is to plan the implementation of this best practice, by creating an best-in-class team hierarchy and creating groups.

To be able to achieve best in class delivery standards, each and every team member’s individual quality is very crucial. It is very important to continuously monitor associates’ quality standards quantitatively and provide continuous focus to individual team member’s learning.

Delivery Excellence is possible only through continuous monitoring and strong governance.

Zero NPR is an easy feat to achieve, provided we and our teams are committed to it and processes are followed thoroughly. Zero NPR achieved will have significant direct benefits,

Productivity of the team will considerably improve and help achieve 100% on time deliveries and 100% fix response times.

100% OTD and FRT are a result of our stable and capable processes. They will ensure we demonstrate high levels of sustainability and result in new business opportunities.

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© 2015 Cognizant

Adoption Feasibility

Adoption Feasibility – VERY HIGH, with little or no customizations

The framework is very generic with parameters that are common across all the projects.

The best practice can be directly adopted by projects with minor project specific customizations.

No technologies involved

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© 2015 Cognizant

References

Recommendations for Institutionalization

Potential areas of reuse

All APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT projects are potential candidates for use of this best practice.

Limitations and Potential Barriers

There are no limitations or barriers in implementing the best practice..

Changes Required

The best practice can be directly adopted by projects with minor customizations to the parameters used for evaluation.

The weightage used can also be customized based on project’s need and criticality to product quality.

The entire customization and adoption in other projects can be done independently within 2 person hours (after initial analysis is complete from project end).

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© 2015 Cognizant

Thank You!