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THE 2012 IT PLANNING GUIDE
A review of the software technology trends predicted for 2012 by experts and
our own survey results, along with staffing priorities and approaches planned
by IT departments and ISVs for next year.
FOR APPLICATION
DEVELOPMENT
The 2012 IT Planning Guide for Application Development
All Rights Reserved. Copyright © Accelerance, Inc., 2011 Page 1
Who Should Read
How will you get your software developed next year?
How will your company take advantage of the latest software trends?
And what are those trends anyway?
This eBook is for IT decision-makers and software
executives -- CIOs, CTOs, directors of application
development or vice presidents of software
engineering -- facing application development
needs in 2012. The guide will help you discover
the software development and technology trends
people are talking about for the year ahead, how
outsourcing relates to these trends and whether
global outsourcing makes sense for your
company.
You may have discovered that effective use of
global software outsourcing is a promising way to
stretch your budget and get more software
developed than you originally thought possible.
You know it can take time to find and select a
good software outsourcing firm from around the
world. Many outsourcing companies talk a good
game about cloud computing and mobile
development or whatever has the latest buzz, but
will they provide you with great programmers and
keep them working on your software for the as
long as needed? You’ll learn about a shortcut to
the reliable software outsourcing firms that avoids
the posers.
Finally, there’s an offer for a free consultation to discuss your situation and how these trends will
affect it with an expert in software technology. Don’t miss this chance to get a running start in
2012!
About Accelerance
Accelerance helps you engage the right offshore/nearshore team to develop high-quality software.
Our free Rapid Referral advisory service enables our clients to make quick, safe and effective use of
global software development. Our expert software outsourcing advice and partner referrals are
completely free for clients because the partners pay Accelerance to find ideal customers for their
services. We’ve evaluated hundreds of offshore and nearshore software outsourcing firms in over a
dozen countries to assess their technology expertise and abilities to deliver services successfully to
the North American and other western markets. Only the most qualified software outsourcing firms
are accepted into the Accelerance network of partner companies. We consider each client’s
business, technical and geographic requirements to quickly match them with the best Accelerance
partner.
Call Accelerance at +1-877-99-ACCEL (877-992-2235) x100 Toll-Free
or +1-650-472-3785 x100 for Global Calls
www.Accelerance.com
The 2012 IT Planning Guide for Application Development
All Rights Reserved. Copyright © Accelerance, Inc., 2011 Page 2
IT Planning Process
Getting Business Value from Application Development in 2012 Is As Easy as 1, 2, 3.
To enhance the effectiveness of your operation and its value to the overall business, you need to
develop applications that drive operational goals. The best way to do that is good planning:
1. Evaluate trends: Understanding the
factors driving your business and operations
empowers you to make better decisions that will
positively affect your bottom line.
2. Identify priorities: Choosing the trends
that provide the most opportunity for your
enterprise will enable you to focus resources on
activities that get results.
3. Determine staffing: Executing your
plans for 2012 requires the right talent for the
job, including internal staff and external
contractors.
1. Evaluate Trends
Here are some trends we’ve been watching:
IT budgets are growing: 40% of IT decision-makers expect their budgets to grow, the
lowest level since 2009 (Spending is Heading Up, Mostly)
Maintenance dominates: 70% of IT spend is devoted to maintaining and operating the
organization, systems and equipment (MOOSE). (IT MOOSE Management — 20 Best
Practices)
Info management outpaces process automation: 39% of IT 2012 budgets will be spent
on information management; 32% on process automation. (2011 Corporate Executive
Board Survey)
Security is paramount: 37.5% of CIOs ranked IT security and privacy as their top
concern, followed by virtualization/cloud, regulatory compliance and managing contractors
and vendors. (Protiviti’s 2011 Information Technologies Capabilities and Needs Survey)
Staffing remains stable: 75% of technology decision-makers expect staffing levels to
remain the same in 2012; 10% predict staff reductions. (Spending is Heading Up, Mostly)
Apps get more focus: 41% of IT staff function dedicated to applications; 22% to
infrastructure. (2011 Corporate Executive Board Survey)
The 2012 IT Planning Guide for Application Development
All Rights Reserved. Copyright © Accelerance, Inc., 2011 Page 3
2. Identify Priorities
Of course your own enterprise will have priorities you need to address. But we think the four big
ideas outlined in the 2011 IBM Global CIO Study provide a solid framework for annual planning:
1. Expand: Refine business processes and enhance collaboration
2. Leverage: Streamline operations and increase organizational effectiveness
3. Transform: Change the value chain via better relationships
4. Pioneer: Drive innovative products, markets and business models
Within these mandates are key tasks that will improve operations and reduce spend:
Updating legacy systems and controlling costs associated with them *
Improving the customer experience for new or improved apps *
Standardizing infrastructure/processes and creating better business processes *
Developing innovative technology and identifying new revenue streams *
Deploying real-time information and “big data” more effectively *
Enhancing communication and collaboration internally and externally
Implementing risk management frameworks
Expanding and improving the value chain
Pursuing continual growth
* These activities are best suited to offshore outsourcing.
Courtesy of the 2011 IBM Global CIO Study
The 2012 IT Planning Guide for Application Development
All Rights Reserved. Copyright © Accelerance, Inc., 2011 Page 4
3. Determine Staffing
Even with high unemployment across the U.S., it can be hard to find the talent you need locally
and affordably. A New York Times article reported that many students hoping to study technology
and engineering give up when they struggle in early courses, reducing the pool of qualified
professionals. With demand high, qualified candidates could cost upwards of $250,000 annually.
What’s a company to do? Consider outsourcing offshore to a team of skilled developers. Sure, it’s
less expensive (see chart). About 50% less. But that’s only part of the benefit.
U.S.
Employee
Hourly
Cost
U.S.
Outsourcing
Offshore
Outsourcing
$43 $86 $22
$50 $100 $26
$57 $114 $30
$65 $130 $35
$72 $144 $39
$79 $158 $43
$86 $172 $48
With a solid offshoring strategy, you can do more than augment your staff.
You can develop great software with an offshore
programming team. And because the group works at
your direction, you can create a predictable software
development process, including project management,
requirements-gathering, software design, architecture
and technology recommendations, and testing and
quality assurance.
Another benefit is flexible ramp-up and ramp-down.
With our Rapid Ramp-Up custom sourcing service,
your selected partner will hire and run your software
development team under your direction. We also offer
a Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) option that
enables you convert the team into your enterprise at a
later date. And when you’re done, you’re done. No
firing. No layoffs. No hassles.
Even better? You don’t have to get on a plane to do it.
As an established software outsourcing company, we
apply our proven sourcing, screening and selection
processes broadly to secure the best in offshore
software development.
For more, check out these posts on our blog:
The Outsourcing Engagement Process
Body Shop or Sweat Shop (Or Neither)
The 2012 IT Planning Guide for Application Development
All Rights Reserved. Copyright © Accelerance, Inc., 2011 Page 5
Working the Agile Way
As the wave of Agile software development crests to its second official decade in 2012, it’s clear
that its use improves quality, adds value and decreases risk.
As its name implies, Agile is ideal for projects requiring quick turn-around in chaotic situations with
changing requirements. Its sprint-based nature and reliance on continuous integration (where new
working versions are released on a 2- to 4-week basis) optimize quality and control risk.
To ramp up projects quickly and ensure consistent quality and reliable delivery, we recommend a
Sprint Zero approach with the following emphases:
Start right: The first day of
Sprint Zero is usually
dedicated to training or a
refresher on Agile and Scrum,
as well as team-building. The
start of a project or a sprint is
often called a “Kick-off
Meeting”. Would you like us
to use that terminology? In
addition to being a team-
building opportunity, kick-offs
are often where feature
estimation is handled in a
group setting. In the official
Scrum Guide, Jeff Sutherland
and Ken Schwaber
recommend that a kick-off
meeting last no more than 8
hours for a one-month sprint or 4 hours for a two-week sprint.
Get quality items on the backlog: Teams take time to define the features or “user
stories” they’re going to build during the current sprint. This is usually done by the product
owner, acting as the customer’s representative, and most often involves prioritization of
feature requests and underlying functionality handled in such a way that a full working
version of the software is always delivered at the end of each sprint.
Decide on a definition of done: It’s vital that all team members understand the
“definition of done” which applies to all feature requirements and acceptance tests for a
given sprint. An important aspect here is that “done” is a binary condition; there is no such
thing as 60% done, for example, on an Agile project.
If this feels contrary to the traditional waterfall model of
development, that’s because it is. Agile projects tend to
be more collaborative and transparent. This lends itself
well to offshore/nearshore outsourcing.
Want to know more? Check out this webinar about
managing the risks of software outsourcing with Agile
methodologies.
The 2012 IT Planning Guide for Application Development
All Rights Reserved. Copyright © Accelerance, Inc., 2011 Page 6
What about CMMI?
We think Agile is a perfect match for CMMI. For example, our partner firm in Colombia collaborated
recently with a Canadian company to create a system for managing thousands of video cameras by
collecting real-time data such as GPS location information for police and other emergency service
providers. You can read more about how a hybrid Agile/CMMI approach was ideal for this project
that was mission-critical in every sense of the term.
The nature of CMMI as a process improvement model blends perfectly with Agile’s empirical
process approach where bug lists, prioritized feature backlogs and burn-down charts can be easily
monitored in near-real-time using commonly available online tools. A test-first approach to coding
assures system integrity and facilitates continuous integration of new code while limiting the
prospect that newly-created parts of a system will render older parts inoperable.
Want to know more? Watch this webinar about the
relationship between Agile methodologies and CMMI.
The 2012 IT Planning Guide for Application Development
All Rights Reserved. Copyright © Accelerance, Inc., 2011 Page 7
Working in the Cloud
Turns out the Rolling Stones had it wrong in when they told the world to Get Off of My Cloud. Now
the cloud is where everyone wants to be. The 2010 IBM Global Tech Trends Survey found that 91
percent of IT pros polled thought the cloud would be the primary IT delivery model by 2015.
Why? Cloud computing eliminates the financial and logistical
overhead associated with hosting applications and ramping up
rapidly by offering a cost-efficient, secure alternative to traditional
hardware infrastructures. The majority of respondents to our
survey noted that cloud storage and computing was a high to
medium priority for 2012.
For example, the cost of a single dedicated computer for hosting is
about $3K for three years. With cloud computing, for the same
$3K you can harness the power of 1,000 computers for a single
day (to handle a usage spike, for example) and then just turn it
off. Outside of the cloud, this level of flexibility is impossible.
The cloud allows enterprises to get much farther with just a few
end-to-end developers. This is particularly important for startups
that are moving rapidly to launch new products in less time with
minimal staff. But new skills are required to manage the cloud, and you may not have this talent
in-house:
Web analytics and statistics: Driving site traffic through search and other vehicles is
essential to monetization. Advertisers want the most for their money. This means analyzing
user interactions and trends, discovering patterns and identifying new needs.
Data mining: Cloud systems can be immense, so knowing what’s in them is essential to
creating value. Using statistical methods to spot patterns in huge data sets helps
organizations get the most from their investments. Data mining is a core competency
because it helps businesses gain an informational advantage over competitors.
Business intelligence: As companies hire more data miners to sift through and organize
information, they need people to interpret that data and translate it into operational goals.
This requires staff with a passion for engineering and competitive intelligence who can help
team members understand both cloud and customer. The overwhelming majority of
respondents to our survey indicated that business analytics was a high priority for 2012.
Since cloud services can be managed from anywhere,
location-specific hiring is less of an issue. Offshore
outsourcing may be a viable human capital strategy for
rapidly growing companies seeking top talent at
reasonable rates. For more, checkout our webinar,
Cloudy with a Chance of Outsourcing.
$3,000 for One Computer or a
Thousand?
The 2012 IT Planning Guide for Application Development
All Rights Reserved. Copyright © Accelerance, Inc., 2011 Page 8
Building UI/UX
Good UI/UX work can improve applications and reduce development time. Or not. To get the most
from these critical roles, you need highly specialized and skilled team members to handle each
function.
UI development is still the domain of programmers expert in, say, Ruby on Rails. UI pros
often hold dedicated positions on the dev team and are responsible for writing code and
accompanying documentation.
UX design experts work through the product development cycle. They handle product
planning to determine the value of products and services and help create goals that support
overall business strategy. These people also handle usability testing for prototypes and
finished products.
If you don’t have internal candidates for
these roles, offshore outsourcing is a
smart and affordable way to get the
talent you need. Similarly, if you have a
large project but no capacity to handle
it, working with an offshore team can
enable you to take on the new project
without letting continuing daily
operations suffer. The group provides a
start-to-finish solution for the entire
product development lifecycle.
Bringing in an outside team can help you
secure the human resources you need
without the management hassles. The
key is choosing a team that uses a
methodology similar to yours, such as
CMMI or Agile (see Working the Agile
Way on page 5).
The 2012 IT Planning Guide for Application Development
All Rights Reserved. Copyright © Accelerance, Inc., 2011 Page 9
Building Mobile/Tablet Apps
It seems that there’s a mobile app for just about everything, from productivity and utilities, to
digital marketing and entertainment, apps aren’t just for Happy Hour anymore. By virtue of shear
numbers alone, mobile apps have taken the world by storm. Demand for these shiny little chiclets
of code seems still to lag the capacity of users to desire them.
And we’ve only just begun. According to the 2010 IBM Global Technology Trends Survey, 55
percent of IT pros think application development for phones and other mobile devices will overtake
development of all other traditional computing platforms by 2015. The majority of respondents to
our own survey said mobile development was a high priority for 2012.
But as simple and sexy as mobile apps
seem to be these days, some CIOs see
risks:
With frequent delivery of new devices and
OS upgrades, it’s challenging for most
organizations to keep up with current
technology or to plan for the future. One
of the biggest unknowns in this regard is
the future viability of HTML5. Long touted
as a multi-platform panacea, native apps
still far outnumber those created for a
standard that seems less standardized
than many had hoped. And as each new
device flies off the factory floor with its
own set of unique vulnerabilities,
companies lack official mobile security
policies.
Despite the challenges, mobile app development will continue to grow. According to Kamesh
Pemmaraju of The Sand Hill Group, this is because mobile devices and applications provide both
internal business value and external value through customer interactions. That’s probably why
mobile app development is driven as much by business unit heads as by the IT department.
As mobile operating systems and devices continue to proliferate, so does the number of people
who can create mobile apps. The narrow scope of most mobile applications makes them ideal for
outsourcing/offshoring to a small distributed team.
Most modern web apps usually require a mobile user interface and global software outsourcing
firms that are good at designing and developing web apps must also be good at mobile apps that
access those web apps.
The 2012 IT Planning Guide for Application Development
All Rights Reserved. Copyright © Accelerance, Inc., 2011 Page 10
The 2012 IT and Software App Priorities Survey
At the end of November 2011 Accelerance asked recipients of our online newsletter to respond to a
multiple-choice online survey request about their IT and application development priorities for
2012. Here are the raw results:
IT and Application Development TECHNOLOGY - What are your priorities for 2012?
High Medium Low or N/A
Mobile/Tablet Apps 47% 42% 11%
Cloud Storage & Computing 53% 32% 16%
New Web Apps 56% 33% 11%
Business Analytics 61% 17% 22%
CRM 50% 22% 28%
Integration using SOA 24% 41% 35%
Third-party APIs & Services 12% 65% 24%
IT Security & Privacy 47% 29% 24%
Agile or Scrum Methodologies 33% 44% 22%
UI/UX Improvements 32% 32% 37%
IT and Application Development STAFFING - What are your priorities for 2012?
Answer Options High Medium Low or N/A
Hire More Developers 45% 35% 20%
Outsource to Extend Your Team 22% 22% 56%
Establish a Captive Offshore Development Center 17% 28% 56%
Move Offshore Development back In-House 6% 18% 76%
Implement Shared Services for IT 12% 47% 41%
An examination of the survey results shows these key points:
Mobile is still popular: Half of respondents selected it, in contrast with articles that say
interest in mobile is waning
New web apps: Most respondents are planning to create them
Business analytics: is hot! A high priority for a majority of respondents
UI/UX improvements: not so much
Third-party APIs: a medium priority for most respondents
Hire more developers locally: and offshore development is a low priority for most
But keep offshore development going: A big majority have low priority or no plans to
move offshore development in-house
The 2012 IT Planning Guide for Application Development
All Rights Reserved. Copyright © Accelerance, Inc., 2011 Page 11
Wrap-up
Well, there you have it: the trends impacting software application development for the coming
year. Here’s a recap of the big take-aways:
IT budgets are growing: More
demand for applications and other
technology is prompting decision-
makers to allocate more funds.
Maintenance dominates: Most of
those funds are dedicated to
maintaining legacy systems and apps,
meaning you’ve got to find less
expensive options for developing new
technologies
Info management outpaces process
automation: Managing data is a higher
priority than streamlining processes,
but both are necessary.
Security is paramount: Locking down
proprietary information and ensuring privacy are the biggest concerns for tech decision-
makers. IT execs love the cloud, but security concerns remain a problem.
Staffing remains stable: That means you’ve got to do more with the same headcount,
and find effective and cost-efficent ways to outsource projects to qualified vendors.
Apps get more focus: Most internal staff time is spent on applications, meaning
infrastructure maintenance and improvements are ripe for outsourcing. Mobile/tablet and
web apps are the highest priorities.
How will these trends affect your job and your enterprise?
The 2012 IT Planning Guide for Application Development
All Rights Reserved. Copyright © Accelerance, Inc., 2011 Page 12
Let’s talk!
You’ve gone through the guide, now it’s time to figure out how to apply all this to the work you’re
doing. So give us a call. We promise we’re not going to put the hard sell on you. Our goal is to help
you:
Gain insight into the IT and application development staffing process
Discover options you may not be aware of for completing IT projects
Identify opportunities to reduce costs and increase ROI
Explore how cloud computing, HTML5 and mobile fit with your initiatives
Create a step-by-step action plan to get things done
Feel confident and re-energized about 2012
To achieve that, we’ll ask you questions like:
What are your goals and objectives for 2012 IT application development?
What is the impact (business value) of achieving these goals?
What are your challenges? What is getting in your way?
How can we help you?
What are the next steps?
What are you waiting for? Click here to set up your free consultation with Accelerance CEO Steve
Mezak. (Yes, free. No cost. No obligation. No lie.)
Why are we doing this for free? When we speak directly to CTOs and other development /
engineering leaders, we get a better understanding of if and how Accelerance can assist you in
achieving your goals. Yes, it helps us qualify you as a lead (or not). But there’s definitely
something in it for you: advice and a sense of what it’s like to work with us.
So click here now to schedule your call with Steve: http://meetwith.me/stevemezak* with one or
more times that work for you. Let’s get going!
* The meetwith.me website from TimeBridge is a free & very convenient service for scheduling
appointments quickly - and it works really great most of the time. But if the site is down or acting
cranky, please just send an email to [email protected] and we'll schedule our call the old-fashioned way.