Achieving Delivery Excellence in Software Development

At Axify, we understand the importance of delivery excellence firsthand. 

Our team includes experienced IT professionals, and as a SaaS company ourselves, we live and breathe the demands of high-quality software delivery. 

That’s why our platform highlights the most impactful software excellence metrics for engineering teams. 

We leverage scientific studies to ensure the metrics we display are meaningful, focusing on data that translates engineering results directly into measurable business impact.

But enough about us—this guide is packed with actionable insights for you.

You’ll see real-world case studies, essential excellence metrics, and best practices we successfully implemented in our own processes.

Let’s begin.

Key Components of Delivery Excellence

If you want to achieve delivery excellence, here’s what you’ll have to focus on.

Process Optimization

Continuous improvement of your processes is how to make your software delivery more and more efficient. 

Data shows that high-performing teams deploy 208 times more frequently and recover from incidents 2,604 times faster than low performers.

First, you’ll want to eliminate bottlenecks. 

Tracking key metrics, like deployment frequency, cycle time, and change failure rate, helps you identify and eliminate those bottlenecks quickly. That leads to a faster, more streamlined workflow. 

Another way to do process optimization is to be transparent and make work visible across teams. From that standpoint, a metrics dashboard like Axify becomes a single source of truth for the whole team, aligning everyone’s efforts to a common goal. 

Risk Management

Unchecked risks hinder delivery when they become real. 

Well, identifying those risks proactively throughout the software development lifecycle minimizes disruptions and reduces your technical debt. Effective risk management can also increase cost efficiency by up to 17%.

So, monitor metrics that matter to avoid issues. For example, change failure rate and failed deployment recovery time (formerly MTTR and Time to Restore Service in the State of DevOps report) offer insights into potential problem areas. 

Customer Focus

Prioritizing customer needs and incorporating feedback leads to products that better align with user requirements. 

That’s why we advise you to follow quality metrics, such as customer-reported bugs and satisfaction scores. The point is to adjust your processes based on direct user impact, which leads to more product relevance and satisfaction.

Team Collaboration

High-quality software delivery relies on collaboration across teams. Data-driven insights foster this environment of teamwork and knowledge sharing.

And recent data shows this can enhance code quality by up to 30%, obviously leading to better delivery.

Delivery Excellence Examples

Let’s review a few examples first, and then we’ll take you through the best practices to achieve equally good results.

BDC Case Study

The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) leveraged Axify’s metrics dashboard to optimize its software development processes across two engineering teams, focusing on key performance improvements without disrupting ongoing workflows. This collaboration produced remarkable results after 3 months of using Axify:

• 74% reduction in time spent in pre-development activities.
• 81% decrease in the time allocated to quality control even though the time spent on bugs decreased by 13% as well.
• 51% faster delivery speed overall.
• $700,000 in recurring annual productivity gains.

Here’s how they did it:

1. BDC focused on refining pre-development workflows. By breaking down project tasks into smaller, manageable work items, the teams could prioritize and allocate resources more efficiently. This approach sets a clear, structured path for upcoming project phases.
2. The teams adopted a shift-left approach, incorporating quality checks earlier in the development process. This proactive approach reduced delays associated with late-stage quality control, allowing faster identification and resolution of issues before they impacted later stages of development.
3. To maintain a steady workflow, BDC implemented Work In Progress (WIP) limits, ensuring that tasks moved through the pipeline without overwhelming the team. This method helped sustain productivity and prevented bottlenecks that typically slow down the delivery process.

Overcoming Complex Delivery Challenges: A Global Case Study

In a multimillion-dollar software delivery project, a leading telecom service provider in Europe faced numerous obstacles, including an uncooperative incumbent vendor, aggressive delivery timelines, and a challenging onsite-offshore ratio. 

Working within an Agile framework, the team encountered obstacles typical of large-scale projects: limited resources, rapid team scaling from 40 to 200 members, and the need for intensive cross-functional collaboration across multiple geographies.

To maintain delivery excellence, they adopted several good strategies:

• A centralized “Wiki” enabled real-time collaboration and knowledge retention, facilitating efficient communication across teams.
• Automated testing and reusable code artifacts led to a 40% improvement in testing efficiency, reduced system downtime, and saved an estimated 150 person-months annually.
• They created a dedicated customer experience team, which helped them gain more end-user acceptance. Besides, the new system was user-friendly and aligned with client expectations.

These strategies led to a 26% reduction in defect rates, significant cost savings, and successful project delivery. All this contributed directly to the client’s time-to-market goals. 

Delivery Excellence Roles and Responsibilities

The case studies above prove one thing. If you use resilient, agile approaches and collaboration tools, you can achieve delivery excellence even in complex project environments.

But you also have to get the right people in the right delivery excellence roles. Here’s what to consider:

• The Delivery Manager oversees the entire software delivery process, ensuring that each phase aligns with business objectives and meets strategic goals. This role focuses on maintaining operational efficiency by managing risks and resolving bottlenecks, ensuring timely, high-quality delivery.
• The Project Manager coordinates resources, schedules, and milestones to keep the software development process on track. All this leads to a more efficient delivery.
• The Product Owner represents the customer’s perspective, ensuring that the software development lifecycle is focused on creating a customer-centric approach. They prioritize tasks based on customer requirements and the overall product vision, aligning work with customer experience goals.
• The QA Lead upholds quality standards by establishing and overseeing testing processes. They design test scenarios, maintain traceability, and address issues proactively to enhance software quality.
• The DevOps Engineer focuses on automation and optimizing deployment pipelines, implementing CI/CD practices to speed up delivery and enhance flow efficiency. They work closely with QA to ensure that the product can be released faster and with fewer errors, aligning with cycle time reduction goals.
• The Development Team is responsible for producing quality code according to specifications. They work closely with QA to maintain coding standards and reduce defects.

Best Practices for Achieving Delivery Excellence

Here are the best practices we found useful and also implemented at Axify.

1. Establish a Knowledge Repository

A centralized knowledge repository lets your teams document lessons learned, best practices, and project-specific details. This repository is a valuable reference for development teams, supporting a data-driven approach to decision-making. The insights captured from each project let teams streamline future processes, reduce recurring issues, and improve operational efficiency.

2. Pilot Deployment for Early Issue Identification

Running a pilot deployment with a small user group before a full-scale release helps you identify and resolve issues early. This customer-centric approach minimizes risk and aligns the software delivery process with customer requirements and business goals. The result is a smoother and more reliable rollout.

3. Automate Testing for Quality Assurance

Use automated testing tools such as Selenium, JUnit, and TestNG to catch defects early in the software development lifecycle and ensure high-quality software. Automation also supports reduced cycle time, which leads to faster releases with less technical debt.

4. Leverage Collaborative Programming

Collaborative methods like mob and pair programming enhance team engagement and boost delivery speed. That’s because they reduce hand-offs and lead to more efficient delivery. 

However, you should align your team efforts with your strategic goals.

5. Use the Walking Skeleton Technique

The Walking Skeleton technique means building a minimal, end-to-end version of a software product that covers its essential architecture and workflows. This primary version works – hence the name “walking skeleton.” 

Even better, focusing on this core functionality lets you identify and solve issues faster. Basically, you support delivery excellence by reducing risk, facilitating iterative improvements, and providing a clear framework for incremental, value-driven development.

6. Address Bottlenecks and Streamline Approvals

Identifying bottlenecks, such as Change Advisory Board (CAB) approvals or waterfall-style quality assurance, can significantly speed up the software delivery process. Reducing unnecessary steps equals reducing delays that can hinder team productivity. And that’s what leads to delivery excellence.

7. Use the S.P.I.D.R. Technique for User Stories

The S.P.I.D.R. technique breaks down large tasks into smaller, manageable units, which supports an Agile delivery approach. 

This practice also improves trend analysis because work units are easier to track. And this fosters stability and predictability because you can conduct more efficient planning.

8. Use the SPACE Framework

The SPACE framework encourages teams to evaluate performance using at least three metrics across three dimensions. The point is to gain a more accurate picture of your team’s progress and performance.

9. Reduce Hand-offs by Integrating QA Early

Involving QA in the early stages of development lets you prepare test scenarios before coding begins. This reduces hand-offs, which means developers can implement automated tests and maintain flow efficiency. 

Early QA involvement also supports continuous learning within the team, helping to build quality into the process from the outset. Plus, you’re ensuring alignment with coding standards.

10. Measure ROI on Continuous Improvement

Tracking the financial impact of your continuous improvement efforts is essential for demonstrating their value. So, focus on metrics that connect to financial returns, such as deployment frequency, change failure rate, and idea success rate. 

That’s how you can quantify the impact of your improvements. 

10 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Delivery Excellence

You can’t achieve delivery excellence without tracking specific KPIs. These software excellence metrics give you a data-driven foundation for continuous improvement. Use them to optimize the software development lifecycle and, therefore, align with your business goals.

Pro tip: During retrospectives, ask the team if the metrics genuinely reflect their experience. Using metrics to drive discussion enables a proactive approach to improvement rather than assigning blame.

Better pro tip: Use the Daily Digest feature in Axify to streamline your daily meetings by focusing on the right metrics, regardless of the framework you’re using (Kanban, Scrum, Agile, DevOps, or another).

1. Deployment Frequency

Deployment frequency measures how often code changes are released to production. High deployment frequency can indicate an agile, iterative approach because your teams deliver features faster and respond quickly to customer feedback. 

For example, elite teams reportedly deploy multiple times per day, as seen with industry leaders like Amazon and Netflix. 

Side note: Frequent deployments may not always correlate with quality. 

Rapid, continuous deployments can introduce unforeseen bugs if quality control is not adequately enforced. For complex products or highly regulated industries, slower deployment cycles with rigorous testing can ensure more stability and security.

2. Lead Time for Changes

Lead time for changes measures the time it takes for a change to move from the first commit in the development environment to running in production. You can calculate this metric by tracking timestamps from the start of a change request to its deployment. Review it regularly to optimize your workflows, plan realistic timelines, and improve release predictability. 

In fact, a shorter lead time reveals fewer bottlenecks, faster feedback, and reduced risk because it allows frequent, small updates. According to the Accelerate State of DevOps Report, elite teams achieve lead times of under an hour, while low performers exceed six months.

3. Cycle Time

Cycle time refers to the period from when a task begins to when it is completed, including active and idle times. Short cycle times suggest an efficient process with minimal waiting, supporting faster releases and reducing costs. For instance, many teams track cycle time per feature to anticipate delivery timelines. 

4. Flow Efficiency

Flow efficiency, the ratio of active work time to total cycle time, reveals how much time is spent actively working versus waiting. If only 20% of the time is active (meaning 80% is idle or waiting), there’s room for improvement in the workflow. For example, low flow efficiency may point to bottlenecks in QA or code review stages. 

However, aiming for 100% flow efficiency could inadvertently encourage multitasking or burnout. Some idle time can be healthy, allowing team members to reflect, review, and strategize.

5. Failed Deployment Recovery Time

This KPI measures how long it takes to recover after a failed deployment. In cases where time-to-recovery is critical, such as for e-commerce sites during peak shopping seasons, rapid recovery can prevent significant revenue loss. 

And you can use Axify’s DORA metrics dashboard to follow failed deployment recovery time:

But quick recovery is only one side of the story; frequent failures that need rapid recovery can point to deeper issues in code quality or testing practices. The goal should be to minimize failures in the first place.

6. Change Failure Rate

The change failure rate measures the percentage of deployments that fail, highlighting the stability of code releases. Strive for low failure rates below 15% because they indicate reliable development and deployment processes. 

Here’s how easily you can see this delivery excellence metric in Axify:

High failure rates of 16-30%, however, suggest instability and poor quality control. If you’re practicing CI/CD, tracking these failure rates can reveal whether you’re sacrificing quality for speed.

7. Work in Progress (WIP)

WIP tracks the number of tasks in progress. Limit WIP to maintain a manageable workload and reduce context-switching. 

Your own WIP limits should be flexible enough to accommodate diverse workflows without causing delays. At Axify, we believe that a good rule of thumb for a WIP limit is the number of team members - 1, so there will always be an extra hand to help finish work before starting a new project.

If you follow the WIP metric in Axify, you can also see your ongoing pull requests, with minimums, maximums, and averages according to your team’s historical records.

8. Issue Type Time Investment

This metric monitors time allocation across different issue types like bugs, feature development, and technical debt. A well-balanced time investment supports both immediate feature delivery and long-term product health.

For example, a team might discover they’re spending 40% of their time on bug fixes, which can nudge them to reassess their testing practices. The aim should be to identify the issues that consume excessive resources and address them proactively.

9. Throughput

Throughput measures the number of tasks completed within a specific timeframe. For example, a team with high throughput consistently delivers work in each sprint, supporting predictable project goals.

Yet, throughput alone doesn’t measure quality; high throughput may sometimes come at the cost of technical debt or rushed work. Teams should use throughput alongside other quality metrics to ensure they’re producing valuable, sustainable code.

10. Time-to-Zero

Time-to-zero estimates the time needed to clear your current backlog if no new tasks are added. This excellence metric helps you identify capacity issues and guide resource allocation. 

For example, if the time-to-zero forecast shows a six-month backlog, you might need to prioritize high-value tasks or bring in additional resources. However, focusing excessively on backlog clearance can detract from strategic goals, such as innovation or responding to market changes.

That’s why you should use time-to-zero as a gauge, not a strict target, to balance backlog management with dynamic project needs.

Tools and Technologies for Delivery Excellence

If you want to achieve delivery excellence, you need the right tools to increase transparency, streamline workflows, and measure progress correctly. 

Here’s what to include in your tech stack.

Project Management Tools

Tools like Jira, Asana, and Trello let you organize, prioritize, and track tasks effectively. You also have more visibility into task progress, deadlines, and resource allocation. The point is to ensure alignment with your project goals. 

For example, Jira's customizable boards and workflows let Agile teams manage sprints and visualize backlogs. 

The real problem is when you have too many of these tools. That brings us to the next point.

Metrics Dashboards

Metrics dashboards like Axify integrate with a slew of project management tools, including Azure Devops, Jira, GitLab, GitHub, and more.

Axify shows you essential metrics in real-time that highlight team performance and process efficiency. 

CI/CD Pipelines

Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI, Azure Pipelines and CircleCI automate the building, testing, and deployment of code. These tools let you release code more frequently because they reduce manual steps and identify issues earlier in the development cycle.

While focusing on continuous improvement and feature development, it's essential not to overlook the operational aspects of maintaining existing systems. You may have heard of them as KTLO, which stands for "keeping the lights on."

Effective operations management ensures that your existing infrastructure remains stable and reliable while you roll out new features. Neglecting this balance can lead to technical debt, increased downtime, and reduced customer satisfaction.

Challenges and Solutions in Achieving Delivery Excellence

Here are some common challenges you’ll probably face as you’re trying to optimize your delivery processes.

• Resistance to change: Teams and individuals may resist changes to established processes because they fear disruption or additional workload. This can slow down improvements and hinder the adoption of best practices.
• Limited resources or budget constraints: Many organizations face financial and resource limitations. Therefore, it’s harder for them to invest in the necessary tools, training, or staff to maintain continuous improvement.
• Misalignment between teams and organizational goals: When development teams don’t understand business objectives, you end up with misaligned priorities and inefficient use of resources. Misalignment can also create friction, slowing down progress.
• Overwhelmed by the scale of the problem: Large, complex challenges can feel paralyzing, leading teams to avoid addressing issues altogether. The sheer scale of the work required to achieve delivery excellence may demotivate them.

Here are our solutions:

• Provide training and development: Train your teams in Agile methodologies, CI/CD tools, and data-driven decision-making. The point is to give them the confidence to adopt these new processes.
• Secure strong leadership support: Successful delivery excellence initiatives require leadership buy-in. Leaders should champion these efforts, allocate resources, and communicate the importance of delivery excellence in achieving strategic goals.
• Foster open communication: Encourage a culture where teams can share feedback, discuss roadblocks, and collaborate effectively. Regular cross-functional meetings and retrospectives align team efforts and ensure everyone is working toward shared objectives.
• Break down large problems into manageable tasks: When facing a problem that seems overwhelming, break it down into smaller, actionable steps. This incremental approach makes it easier to start and provides frequent wins. That’s how you build momentum toward larger goals rather than attempting a complete overhaul at once.

Conclusion: Use Axify to Achieve Delivery Excellence

Delivery excellence means higher quality code, with fewer incidents and better-spent resources.

In the case of the Business Development Bank of Canada, this all translated into $700,000 in recurring annual productivity gains.

Axify helps engineering teams like yours to achieve that delivery excellence, too. 

You have already seen some of the streamlined metrics and actionable insights we offer.

Basically, our dashboard helps you monitor every stage of the development lifecycle. You can also use Value Stream Mapping and DORA metrics to highlight bottlenecks and refine processes for smoother, faster delivery.

Besides, you can use our software delivery forecasting and resource allocation features to plan your resources better.

Unlike other metrics dashboards, we offer two unique points:

• Team satisfaction tracker: We understand that people are the engine behind your company. Axify helps you monitor different metrics related to their well-being to make sure they remain task-oriented.
• Mentorship and guidance: Axify can work with your team to implement the best metrics for process improvement and proactive risk management.

Ready to scale your software delivery? 

Book a demo today to see how Axify can support your team in achieving delivery excellence.