Dot & Tom,
I mentioned in a recent mail to Tom that we had just made a big announcement which would be of interest to you both. Well here it is.
You may recall that we classify errors on our Icon software according to their impact on a customer's business, and we award each error a Problem Severity Level (PSL) which determines how fast we shall respond in fixing the error and shipping the fix to the customer. We have two broad categories: high severity (PSL 1-3); and low severity (PSL 4-6). The former are obviously the ones that impact the customers the more.
We have now reached the point in our process maturity where we can confidently claim our software to be sufficiently reliable that we can turn that into a positive marketing statement.
Since we started Document Inspection in December 1994, our Reliability Attribute for high severity errors - the number of PSL 1-3 errors per customer per year - has improved by a factor of FIVE, from 51.4 errors/customer/year to 9.7 errors/customer/year. In the same period our MTTR (Mean Time To Repair) for all errors has improved by a factor of THREE. And we've done all this while reducing the number of developers on the product by 29% and the amount of time logged to fixing errors from 80% of all time logged down to 35%.
All this has accrued as a direct result of our adoption of the Gilb/Graham methods, particularly Inspection, and I believe speaks eloquently for the maturation that our software process has gone through during the period.
And as a direct business benefit to our company we are now offering our customers
"THE ICON SOFTWARE GUARANTEE"
in which we will, for every PSL 1-3 error found by customers which we subsequently action, credit an amount of money against future charges.
You may imagine the impact this had on our customers when I announced this at our most recent User Group meeting in Frankfurt at the end of October.
I wonder if anyone else has been able to turn Inspection and the other techniques into such a direct business benefit?
I hope you will both be able to turn this to your advantage too; if it had not been for the methods that you developed, documented and now teach this would not have been possible for us.
Primark Icon thanks you both.
Regards,
+----------------------------------------------------+
| Dick Holland office: 631dh@pimsl.com |
| home: dholland@cix.compulink.co.uk | >>
.
.
*** Home *** About Gilb *** What we can Do for You *** Contact Information *** Web Video Presentations *** Gilb's Books *** Courses & Lectures Public *** Download Center *** Forum & Chat - Gilb Methods *** Links *** Fun ***
eMail: Tor Gilb HeadOffice@Result-Planning.com Phone: +(47) 66 80 46 88, Mobile: +(47) 926 67187
eMail: Tom Gilb TomGilb@Result-Planning.com
eMail: Kai Gilb KaiGilb@Result-Planning.com