Analyst(s): Guy Currier
Publication Date: December 10, 2024
Application development firm SOUTHWORKS presented at last month’s App Dev Field Day. CTO and Partner Johnny Halife described the company’s methodology and experiences creating and delivering defined and scoped software development and modernization initiatives for customers. By focusing on planning, internally promoting, and delivering code that meets the customer’s goals and uses the customer’s preferred platforms, SOUTHWORKS has helped organizations make productive, tangible progress in the evolution of their software.
What is Covered in this Article:
- Target scenario: Major software initiatives, whether focused on a specific app or aiming for evolutionary or transformational progress across the application estate.
- SOUTHWORKS positions itself as an external firm that avoids becoming too embedded, focusing on executing cogent application development plans with a clear scope and budget.
- The firm’s services also comprehend non-coding elements key to a project’s success, such as early stage discovery, requirements collection, evangelism of the app or software, and enablement of post-project maintenance and governance.
- This example is instructive of what kind of external vendor engagement can most effectively ensure app dev project completion and timely value.
The News: At last month’s App Dev Field Day colocated with KubeCon in Salt Lake City, app dev services firm SOUTHWORKS presented to the Field Day delegates its value proposition to organizations needing to build, update, or modernize their own software. The company explained how it helps its customers with expert and strategic talent applied to time-bound, fully planned, and managed development projects.
Less Creepy App Dev? SOUTHWORKS Shows How a Vendor Can Reduce Slippage and Increase Scope Control
Analyst Take: When you construct a building, you hire an architect, an engineering firm, and a master contractor. They first create the design and construction plan and then the building itself, all under your close supervision. Free of the day-to-day work and any need for deep expertise on architecture, engineering, or construction, you can instead invest your time and talent in monitoring progress and ensuring your needs are met. Then you or your management firm takes over operations.
Applied to software development, this is the model promised by app dev services firm SOUTHWORKS at App Dev Field Day in Salt Lake City this November. SOUTHWORKS makes an interesting case for not building or transforming your software yourself but instead getting an experienced and capable vendor to do it for you.
It is said that your software is your business, which is true enough. Software is how your organization accomplishes everything from innovation to delivery, and is very much part of how customers and communities interact with your brand. You can see your software as an extension of your brand and, for apps custom-built for you, as your intellectual property.
If software’s now-fundamental role in the strength of your organization and brand drives you to build all your custom software yourself, you might be making a critical error.
The Issue of App Dev Project Reliability
Attempts at creation, updating, or modernization of software can run out of control when carried out within an organization. Internal coding projects are vulnerable to scope creep, continuous streams of new requirements, and the disruption of shifting stakeholders. Almost by definition in fact, any internal project of sufficient importance and size will experience these, because the political and cultural pressures on an organization’s own employees are too significant to resist.
One of the main reasons organizations hire external app dev services firms is to counter these pressures and provide some assurance that a project will complete. Vendor contracts with committed budgets have the counterbalancing pressures of ROI, the reputation of the organization, and brand image. This reflects an intelligent recognition that even if “your software is your business,” you do not need to build that software yourself.
But engaging an app dev services firm can also turn into a trap of its own. There is incentive, both internally and in the firm that has been hired, for that firm to become more embedded, broad-ranging, and strategic in its approach. This allows the vendor to understand the organization better and use that knowledge to improve the value it provides. The catch is that this deeper embedding now makes the app dev services susceptible to the very same disruptive political and cultural pressures felt by internal teams.
A Promising App Dev Services Approach to Reliable Software Modernization
SOUTHWORKS’s presentation brought this conundrum to light; they present themselves as an external firm that behaves differently to avoid this trap. In fact SOUTHWORKS CTO Johnny Halife was careful to stress in the beginning that their approach is neither advisory nor strategic. SOUTHWORKS takes the strategy, requirements, and goal; puts together a cogent application development plan; and executes it in concert with only those internal organizational members and resources that are necessary to perform the work. Additional budget is attached to any change request, so the project better maintains its integrity and ability to complete.
You may notice how similar this is to the “build a building” model I described at the beginning. Similarly, when the software project is complete, SOUTHWORKS hands it over to you for your team or management firm to run.
SOUTHWORKS is not an app dev staff augmentation firm. Their model comprehends many elements of a plan and project that go beyond just providing coding and project management talent:
- early stage discovery and requirements collection
- evangelism of the app or software, its goals, and its plan
- enablement and training for post-project maintenance, operations, and governance.
This is an attractive way to use app dev services to ensure the success of major software initiatives, whether tied to a particular app or to make evolutionary or transformational progress across your application estate.
It’s Still All About You
Remember, your software can still remain “your business.” You can still take part in all the fun stuff of strategy, technology, architecture, and so forth. But the example of SOUTHWORKS shows that the progress of your organization does not have to wait on any of that—or get bogged down in addressing a whole universe of needs and agendas. These needs and agendas can very well, ultimately, make the outcome of your software development much better. But they might also prevent any release at all. Build your apps like you would build a building—using app dev services in place of the architect, engineering firm, and master contractor—and you can take advantage of both sides of this equation.
What to Watch:
- Your software is critical and integral to your organization and a strong driver of value and results. But that does not mean that you must hire and develop your own software development talent internally.
- Internally executed software development often faces scope creep, changing requirements, and shifting stakeholders, leading to disruptions and delays, sometimes severe.
- External consulting firms may be unable to address these problems and ensure project completion because they can become too embedded in the organization and fall to the same pressures.
- An external vendor such as SOUTHWORKS can provide the project completion assurance you need while maintaining high quality and effectiveness. Ensure insulation from delay-inducing pressures with a vendor that focuses on goals, requirements, and outcomes rather than strategy or organizational development.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
Other insights from The Futurum Group:
What You Need to Know About Sonatype’s Keynote Speakers for the 9th ADDO
DevOps Dialogues: Exploring Kubernetes, WebAssembly and Cloud-Native Modernization
DevOps Dialogues: Outsourcing Skill Gaps
Image Source: SOUTHWORKS
Author Information
Guy is the CTO at Visible Impact, responsible for positioning, GTM, and sales guidance across technologies and markets. He has decades of field experience describing technologies, their business and community value, and how they are evaluated and acquired. Guy’s specialty areas include cloud, DevOps/cloud-native/12-factor, enterprise applications, Big Data, governance-risk-compliance, containerization, virtualization, HPC, CPUs-GPUs, and systems lifecycle management.
Guy started his technology career as a research director for technology media company Ziff Davis, with stints at PC Magazine, eWeek, and CIO Insight. Prior to joining Visible Impact, he worked at Dell, including postings in marketing, product, and technical marketing groups for a wide range of products, including engineered systems, cloud infrastructure, enterprise software, and mission-critical cloud services. He lives and works in Austin, TX
