How to Fix Software Product Delivery

The Way I Approach Software Delivery When There Are Signs of Issues

I’ve yet to see a company that is entirely happy with its pace of software delivery. In scaled organizations, delivery bottlenecks often emerge, slowing down releases, frustrating teams, and impacting business outcomes. Many companies attempt quick fixes — throwing more resources at the problem, increasing deadlines, or tweaking processes — but often, these do not address the root cause.

Analyze First: Identifying Root Causes

Before jumping to solutions, it’s critical to analyze the root causes. My approach involves a multi-dimensional analysis based on structured data collection, conversations, and self-assessments.

The Dimensions of Root Cause Analysis

Based on the Delft University study conducted for ING, the most effective root cause analysis covers five key dimensions:

1. Organizational Factors — Alignment, executive support, and company-wide priorities.
2. Process Factors — Agile maturity, workflow efficiency, and backlog management.
3. Project Factors — Dependencies, complexity, and security requirements.
4. People Factors — Team stability, experience, and communication effectiveness.
5. Technical Factors — Code quality, test automation, and deployment pipeline robustness.

How to Gather Insights

• Surveys — Collecting structured responses from engineers, product managers, and other stakeholders.
• One-on-One Conversations — Speaking directly with team members to understand practical challenges.
• Self-Assessments — Encouraging teams to score themselves across key delivery criteria.
• Data Analysis — Reviewing historical delivery performance, cycle times, and dependency graphs.

Scoring and Benchmarking

Each criterion is evaluated using a scoring system, providing an objective way to compare different teams, projects, and areas of improvement. This helps identify systemic issues rather than treating every delivery problem as an isolated case.

Full Criteria Catalog

Dimension	Criteria
Organization	Organizational alignment across departments
	Dealing with geographic distribution
	Organizational politics
	Executive support
	Stability of the organization
Process	Refinement of requirements
	Agile Maturity
	Regular Software delivery
	Management of work in progress
	User / customer involvement
Project	Project newness
	Project Size
	Task dependencies
	Project security or regulatory constraints
People	Communication
	Team familiarity
	Team commitment
	Team stability
	Skills and knowledge
Technical	Infrastructure reliability
	Code documentation
	Technical dependencies
	Bug or incident handling
	Code quality
	Testing

Reference

This article is based on the research conducted by Delft University for ING:

Kula, E., Greuter, E., van Deursen, A., & Gousios, G. (2022). Factors Affecting On-Time Delivery in Large-Scale Agile Software Development. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 48(9), 3573-3586.