Currently, large enterprises increasingly rely on long-term outsourcing arrangements, potentially costing millions of dollars. In this environment, the customer often assesses “billable hours” rather than the “value created.” It can be difficult to determine if rising costs are the result of increasing scope or a reduced efficiency. To address this issue, organizations must shift to an objective, evidence-based approach. The benchmarking process uses a structured methodology that highlights expenditures into clear productivity metrics that can be compared against industry standards. Outsourcing contracts can then be transformed from financial burdens into high-performing partnerships, that ensure that the money spent is aligned with competitive, market-standard productivity.

This short report examines a company’s business case to change the platform of their main system, from high-code to low-code. Current maintenance activities were considered, along with ongoing enhancements to the system. Productivity benchmarks from ISBSG Data Repositories were obtained for low-code projects. This enabled the calculation of potential productivity and cost gains from moving from high to low-code environments. Financial metrics, such as Payback Period, Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return are also calculated to support the company’s business case.

A telecommunications provider faced challenges in assessing the performance of its agile development teams, working on Java-based projects. The company lacked a standardized approach to measure key performance indicators. It was unable to determine how the team compared to industry standards. A lack of data-driven insights prevented the company from identifying areas of improvement. The benchmarking process used to evaluate the agile development teams relied upon ISBSG data. It involved a structured, data-driven approach to measure productivity, delivery speed, cost efficiency, and process quality. The process was designed to compare the company’s internal performance metrics against ISBSG’s industry benchmarks to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement.