Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a
Distributed Agile Delivery Model for
ADM Services, 2016–17
Publication Date: 10 Jun 2016
Hansa Iyengar
|
Product code: IT0019-003553
Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
Summary
Catalyst
The constant flux in today's business environment is a key challenge faced by businesses as they
struggle to get high-quality software products to market quickly and efficiently. Traditional application
development practices are giving way to agile or hybrid methodologies that have long been used by
technology companies and software vendors as an efficient and effective means of rapidly building,
testing, and deploying software. The traditional enterprise space is rapidly realizing the advantage that
agile development methodologies can deliver as they seek to better address business requirements
and lower application development costs. Outsourcers have also realized that highly disciplined agile
development processes offer increased flexibility and faster time-to-market for new products and
services and are rapidly adopting agile practices across their wider application development services
portfolio.
Ovum view
This report evaluates nine leading India-based outsourcers that are active across multiple markets
and verticals and who have a substantial portion of their application development and maintenance
(ADM) businesses using agile methodologies. Distributed agile is gaining strong traction in the market
as a viable alternative to traditional application development practices. Most vendors are using agile
or agile-derived methodologies and geographically dispersed teams that leverage modern
communication technologies (which were not that prevalent at the time the Agile Manifesto was
conceptualized), such as videoconferencing, social, cloud, and mobile to narrow the geographical and
cultural barriers between geographically dispersed teams – what we term distributed agile.
There has been a rapid maturing of agile practices in the outsourcing arena, and large systems
integrators (SIs) such as Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro, and Cognizant are
pushing greater elements of the agile approach into their ADM business. On the other hand, agile and
Lean form the core culture of midsized vendors such as Torry Harris Business Solutions (THBS),
Persistent Systems, and Virtusa, while the aggressiveness of the approach that vendors like NIIT
Technologies (NIIT Tech) and L&T Infotech take relies largely on their relationship with the client.
The nine outsourcers under consideration here deliver everything from consulting around technical
and organizational change management (OCM), agile and related training for clients, hybrid and
highly flexible options around pricing and delivery mechanisms, and the tools needed to deliver these
services – all as part of a "package deal." Though each vendor has its own set of "differentiators" (e.g.
L&T Infotech and NIIT Tech's vertical expertise; Persistent's specialization in agile; Cognizant, Infosys,
Wipro, and TCS in their wider range of services), this Ovum Decision Matrix (ODM) is aimed at
highlighting that there is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to agile transformation.
Agile is clearly distinct from traditional waterfall practices because it involves the customer and users
in a much more iterative process. This makes it a far more fluid scenario where it is difficult to
establish milestones or know when they have been achieved. Although the fundamentals of
distributed agile and the tools and team compositions utilized to deliver it are mature and highly
similar across all the vendors assessed, this ODM aims to highlight the point that the main
differentiation lies in the "fine print" – the nuances of the consulting organization that helps clients
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
fine-tune the cultural and people aspects of agile transformation; the tools and metrics used to identify
and measure performance; and the effectiveness of the delivery and sales organizations in providing
consistent and high-quality services by functioning as a single cohesive unit with the consulting
teams.
Key findings

The distributed agile delivery mechanism is very mature, with all the vendors evaluated
showcasing a strong set of capabilities and continued investments in growing competencies
in this space.

Cognizant, Infosys, and TCS emerged as the leaders in this ODM with the highest overall
scores. However, no single vendor emerged as the clear leader across all the dimensions
being assessed.

The leaders are separated from the followers and challengers on the basis of marginal
differences across some of the criteria evaluated, such as a robust consulting organization, or
highly synchronized consulting delivery, or a greater aptitude for putting skin in the game
through the use of gain-share pricing models.

Cognizant, the overall top scorer, performed the best in the strategy execution dimension,
thanks to an aggressive go-to-market proposition and willingness to share risk in the form of
innovative pricing models.

Meanwhile, TCS showed considerable strength in the dimension that measured distributed
agile development capabilities across its consulting and delivery arms, coming in right behind
Persistent Systems, which led the group in this dimension (though it did not place in the
leaders category in overall scores).

Infosys scored top marks when it came to the market impact dimension, with its sales,
consulting, and delivery arms functioning as a well-oiled machine that is focused on providing
seamless, high-quality experiences across its client portfolio.

Vendors using agile methodologies fall on a continuum that spans all levels of maturity, with
each vendor showcasing strength in parts of the portfolio while falling short in a few other
areas. This also made this ODM a particularly complicated and difficult evaluation to score.

The IT services providers in this ODM are mostly SIs that use offshore locations extensively
for delivering services and hence have perfected the art of applying technology to drive the
use of distributed agile methodologies across their application development business.

This impetus to adopt agile arises from the rapidly evolving business environment and the
premium that enterprises are placing on the vendors' ability to reduce the time-to-market for
working software. Adding more fuel to this fire is the exponential growth in the adoption of
digital technologies across the enterprise.

The choice of best vendor for an agile-based engagement, however, will continue to be
enterprise-specific and determined by their search for the optimal combination of skills that
are most valuable to their business at a particular point in time.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
Vendor selection
Inclusion criteria
Many enterprises often struggle with the process of evaluating offshore vendors' agile capabilities,
especially in a highly distributed environment. This ODM addresses that conundrum by focusing
solely on key India-based vendors who are most frequently part of the RFP process. We invited 14
vendors (a group that was whittled down from a larger list) to submit responses to an initial screener
that collected pertinent information about their use of agile methodologies in their traditional ADM
business. The final list of vendors included in this ODM was determined using the following method:

Three of the screener questions were chosen as inclusion criteria (see Table 1) and weights
were assigned to each based on their importance.

The average value for each criterion was based on the vendor's responses submitted and
they were rated using the following scale: 1 = below average; 2 = average; and 3 = above
average.

We arrived at a final score for each vendor – which is a factor of the assigned scores and
associated weights. Those vendors that had a final score of 1.8 and above were included in
the final list of vendors invited to participate in this research.
Table 1: Inclusion criteria
Selection criteria
Average
Weights
What proportion of total engagements
use agile as the dominant (>50% of the
time) methodology?
50%
40%
What percentage of overall agile
engagements are distributed in nature
(using teams working in time zones at
least four hours apart)?
88%
35%
Agile resource utilization (percentage of
active personnel working on agile
engagements / total agile-trained
personnel)
52%
25%
Source: Ovum
The following vendors are included in this report:

TCS

Infosys

Cognizant

Wipro

Persistent Systems

Torry Harris Business Solutions (THBS)

NIIT Technologies

Virtusa

L&T Infotech.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
Note: L&T Infotech has been included as a nonparticipating vendor; the top-line scores for L&T
Infotech, its relatively shorter profile, and SWOT analysis are based on our own existing knowledge
and assessment of the vendor's capabilities.
Exclusion criteria
We did not include product and engineering services providers (or the product and engineering
services business of traditional outsourcers), agile tools vendors, and pure-play agile specialists (such
as ThoughtWorks) in this study as some of these will be covered in a separate report. We also
excluded a vendor if it:

failed to complete the Ovum RFI

failed to demonstrate that a significant portion of its ADM portfolio utilizes agile or hybrid
agile-based development methodologies

decided to not participate at all in the ODM.
A couple of vendors were also disqualified during the evaluation process due to their inability to
provide follow-up briefings and requested data on time.
Methodology
Ovum Decision Matrices evaluate products and services across three dimensions. For this ODM, we
have assessed the vendors' services on the following dimensions:

Capability matrix, which assesses the vendors' skills, capabilities, and the depth and breadth
of the portfolio of agile offerings;

Strategy execution, which assesses the vendors' ability to deliver effective services in ways
that suit a variety of different customer needs and sourcing models; and

Market impact, which measures the vendors' success in reaching their target market and in
responding to the needs of that market.
Ovum has split each dimension up into multiple criteria buckets that are comprised of individual
questions or assessments around the specific part of the portfolio being evaluated. Each question has
been weighted according to the importance we attribute to it in relation to the criteria bucket it falls
under. These criteria buckets are also weighted based on their relevance to the dimension they are
part of. Finally, the three dimensions (capability matrix, strategy execution, and market impact) are
also weighted according to our understanding of the importance they might have in vendor selection
decisions (see Figure 1).
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
Figure 1: Overall weightings for ODM assessment dimensions
Source: Ovum
These questions and the associated weights were designed to generate a compound score that
reflects how close (or otherwise) the vendor's offering is from a comprehensive proposition that can
be tailored to an individual client's needs. Each of these dimensions and associated criteria buckets
are explained below with the associated weightings indicated alongside.
Capability matrix (45% of final weighting)
For this assessment dimension, Ovum assesses the capabilities that differentiate the leading
providers in the marketplace. The assessment is based on the criteria listed below – there are multiple
weighted components to each criterion and each criterion is also weighted (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Weightings for the capability matrix dimension
Source: Ovum

Agile utilization (30% of capability matrix dimension): In what percentage of the vendor's
ADM projects was agile used for delivering more than 30% of the project? What is the
vendor's key value proposition around agile that is used to win business from new or existing
accounts? How has the adoption of agile methodologies across the ADM business grown
over the last few years?
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17

Project management & consulting (40%): How are roles and responsibilities in a typical
agile project delineated between onshore and offshore? How do the roles transition over time
as the client-vendor relationship matures? What kind of consulting and organizational change
management (OCM) capabilities, such as assessment of client's agile readiness, change
management workshops, agile roadmap design, and training, does the vendor possess to
support large-scale agile transformation exercises? How many consultants support the agile
offering and what kind of experience do they possess? What tools and frameworks support
the vendor's consulting and change management offerings?

Tools & training (30%): What are the training and certification programs (both internal and
external) that are used to train vendor resources? What training programs and partnerships
are leveraged for providing training/workshops for client teams during agile transition? What
are the major tools (proprietary and/or open source) that support the vendor's agile portfolio?
How customizable are these to client needs? What kind of continued investments are being
made in tools and training to sustain competitive advantage?
Strategy execution (45% of final weighting)
For this dimension, Ovum has assessed the capabilities of the vendor's engagement model and
investments for building innovative practices/processes across its agile practice (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Weightings for the strategy execution dimension
Source: Ovum

Sales approach (70% of strategy execution dimension): We evaluated the process used
by the vendor for identifying and targeting projects (existing or new clients) most suitable for
agile. What are the two most commonly used pricing/commercial models for agile
engagements? Does the vendor offer hybrid approaches to pricing that move away from
traditional time and materials or fixed price? What are its three most advanced
hybrid/complex pricing models? (If hybrid pricing models do not exist, vendors were asked to
describe their pricing strategy.) What are the major metrics that vendors use internally to
evaluate an agile engagement?

Innovation (30%): What are the top three strategic investments the vendor will make in the
next 12–18 months to grow agile capabilities? How will these investments help the vendor win
new clients or more business from existing clients? What efforts are being made to bring
greater innovation and differentiation to the offering?
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
Market impact (10% of final weighting)
This dimension assesses the global market impact of a provider. Market impact measures the
vendor's efforts to build thought leadership in the agile space, and to push agile as the dominant
methodology across digital and transformative engagements (see Figure 4). We also captured the
feedback from several reference clients provided by each of the vendors we evaluated.
Figure 4: Weightings across market impact dimension
Source: Ovum

Market evangelism and market visibility (30% of market impact dimension): We looked
for any concerted efforts or strategies in place for promoting agile, especially around the
growing demand for services targeted at the digital enterprise. What is the vendor doing to be
perceived as a thought leader in this space? Has it invested in developing thought leadership
in this area? We asked vendors to explain investments and cite notable examples of papers
or publications, and describe initiatives around developing a center of excellence (CoE) for
agile.

Customer survey (70%): We conducted an online survey of reference clients provided by the
vendor to assess the effectiveness of its sales organizations, the efficiency of its delivery
network, and the consistency of agile delivery across multiple engagements. Customer
perception of the vendor's capabilities, partner ecosystem, and adaptability when it comes to
providing a customizable set of delivery and pricing mechanisms were also taken into
account.
Ovum ratings

Market leader: This category contains the vendors that achieved the highest overall scores
across the three assessment dimensions. These vendors presented the strongest overall
portfolio of agile-related offerings and have strong programs in place to provide the required
training and change management services. Separately, we have also identified market
leaders in the capability matrix and strategy execution dimensions to reflect the particular
strengths that certain vendors have either in terms of their technical capabilities or their
service delivery capabilities and processes.

Market challenger: The providers in this category have strong market positions and are
promoting their offerings effectively in their target markets. Most of these providers offer a
narrower set of services than the market leaders and might not offer all of the service delivery
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
and pricing options available from the leaders. Their services are generally tailored to specific
types of customer and engagement models. Market challengers may be strong or indeed
leaders on specific assessment criteria, so customers should pay attention to the criteria that
are most important to them. The market challengers' offerings generally provide competitive
capabilities and sound consulting and/or change management offerings, but customers will
need to carefully assess them on the basis of how their strengths align with customer needs.

Market follower: Providers in this category typically meet the requirements of customers
looking for a more traditional approach to their agile development needs. They have either a
narrower target market, focusing on specific verticals, or have smaller consulting practices
than the leaders and challengers. Market followers have limited, but rapidly growing,
capabilities primarily due to the nuances of the specific verticals in which they operate (for
example, if the vendor operates in verticals that are traditionally ambivalent towards agile and
especially distributed teams that use agile, that would reflect in the vendor's offerings).
Consequently, they are often reluctant to adopt nontraditional pricing and delivery models and
are slower to invest in growing their agile practices than their direct competitors. These
vendors would appeal to clients looking for deep vertical expertise and experience in dealing
with complex industry-specific issues during agile transformation programs.
Market and service analysis
Ovum Decision Matrix: Distributed Agile Delivery Models,
2016–17
Delivering high-quality, user-friendly software and the ability to get new apps or features and
functionality to market either ahead of the competition or (more often) as soon as possible after the
competition has introduced something new is the need of the hour. This is driving a substantial
increase in interest around highly disciplined agile development methodologies as a way to prevent
wasteful practices, increase flexibility to enable the business to make rapid changes to deployed
software, and facilitate faster time-to-market for new products and services.
With the rapid evolution in communication and collaboration technologies facilitating real-time
interactions, many enterprises are taking agile development one step further and are working with
vendors on projects that utilize agile practices across geographically dispersed teams. The adoption
of distributed agile is growing at a rapid clip as identified by VersionOne's State of Agile surveys. This
annual global survey, conducted by agile lifecycle management software vendor VersionOne, reported
that in 2014, 80% of the 4,000 respondents were using distributed agile teams across one or more
projects, up from 35% in 2012.
Most of the major offshore outsourcers have made agile a staple of their application services delivery
portfolio to meet the rapidly growing demand for speed and agility from their clients. These
outsourcers have also showcased a much more creative approach, adapting multiple methodologies
such as scrum, Lean, kanban, and even elements of waterfall into customizable, hybrid practices that
are adaptable to the client's requirements, as well as their familiarity with agile practices, and appetite
for risk. In doing so they have been able to marry the cost-benefits of outsourcing with the
speed-to-market of agile methodologies, which is a big advantage for enterprises looking at "going
agile" while simultaneously maintaining control on costs.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
Figure 5: Ovum Decision Matrix: Distributed Agile Delivery Models, 2016–17
Source: Ovum
Figure 6: Expanded view of Ovum Decision Matrix: Distributed Agile Delivery Models, 2016–17
Source: Ovum
Table 2: Ovum Decision Matrix: Distributed Agile Delivery Models
Market leaders
Market challengers
Market followers
Cognizant
NIIT Technologies
L&T Infotech
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
Infosys
Persistent Systems
TCS
Torry Harris Business Solutions (THBS)
Wipro
Virtusa
Source: Ovum
Market leaders: Distributed agile delivery models
Cognizant, Infosys, and TCS emerged as the overall leaders in this assessment primarily due to the
end-to-end nature of their offerings, which include a solid consulting/OCM offering, strong delivery
execution, and robust tools and metrics for assessing various aspects of agile program management.
Overall, this is a blended score across the entire range of offerings.
All three vendors are well-known system integrators, have experience with managing large-scale
engagements, and are very well respected in the outsourcing space. This has had an important
influence on the way they articulate their respective value proposition, establish training programs
(both internally and with external partners and industry body affiliations), and the robustness of their
agile scaling frameworks. Market leaders have a heavy focus on industry-leading training programs
and certifications, and leverage popular frameworks like the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and
Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) to augment training programs (several of the challengers also have similar
affiliations, though not at the same level).
In terms of offerings and service delivery, the market leaders offer the broadest range of customizable
options across both the delivery and consulting organizations for a wide array of clients from across
verticals, geographies, and requirements. That said, while these three vendors offer a wider array of
choices, they are not outright leaders in the capability matrix (that accolade goes to Persistent
Systems). However, these vendors have scored significantly higher on other assessment dimensions
such as strategy execution, where Cognizant maintains a slight lead over the others, showcasing an
impressive appetite for putting more skin in the game through the use of novel pricing mechanisms
and a clear focus on continually improving service delivery quality.
On the market impact dimension, Infosys pulls ahead due to the efficiency with which its consulting
and delivery organizations function to offer high levels of client engagement. On the other hand, TCS
and Cognizant lead the pack in the market evangelism aspect of the market impact dimension due to
their concerted and highly focused efforts to build thought leadership, significant investments to
promote agile as the de facto delivery methodology across their organizations, and efforts around
building co-innovation networks with clients and partners to push agile beyond traditional boundaries.
Market challengers: Distributed agile delivery models
There's very little to divide the scores of the five market challengers (NIIT Tech, Persistent, THBS,
Wipro, and Virtusa) and the differences come down to specific aspects of their portfolio and market
approach. However, we want to note that Persistent scored the highest marks in the capability matrix
dimension among all the vendors evaluated.
NIIT Tech brings specialized expertise into play in domains such as travel and transportation,
insurance, financial services, media, and manufacturing when it pitches its agile transformation
capabilities. About 90% of the vendor's agile projects are highly distributed in nature and the vendor
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
showed greater flexibility to mold its offerings to client needs; however, this does not translate into
flexible or hybrid pricing models. What is notable, however, is the vendor's willingness to engage in an
outcome-linked, risk/reward-sharing model in some of its key accounts. Combined with a portfolio of
industry-specific proprietary solutions, robust training programs courtesy of its links with one of India's
largest IT training institutions, and well-balanced geographic presence, NIIT Tech has all the right
elements in place to move into the leader category, provided it continues to invest in growing its agile
capabilities.
Persistent brings long-standing heritage as a preferred provider for major independent software
vendors (ISVs), and hence agile is central to its value proposition. The vendor is a strong advocate of
the benefits of agile and often promotes agile methodologies even if the customer does not have
much appreciation for it. This is a distinctly different approach than that of most competitors who
prefer to present alternatives when customers are not "ready" for agile. Persistent also takes a highly
customer-driven approach to tooling and has made investments in commercial tools as well as
proprietary IP that conforms to industry standards. Moreover, the vendor's recent partnership with
collaboration solutions provider Conteneo allows it to add an interesting dimension of gamification to
its agile engagements. All this is combined with a very strong consulting/OCM practice that brings
great depth of understanding of client challenges as well as a very distinct approach towards
generating client buy-in for agile transformation when compared to its competition. Despite this
proactive approach, the vendor's pricing models in the applications space evaluated here are not as
creative or flexible as those showcased by some of the competition. However, it did highlight a
different approach with its willingness to enter gain-share arrangements around its product
development offerings, which were out of scope for this report.
THBS, though one of the smaller vendors covered in this ODM, is well recognized as a specialist
vendor in the middleware integration, service-oriented architecture (SOA), and application program
interface (API)-based transformation services area, with agile being a preferred delivery methodology
across more than half of the vendor's engagements. THBS's value proposition has strong elements
–frameworks, a proven DevOps approach, and robust toolkits – that support the entire project
lifecycle. THBS's approach to tooling relies heavily on open source tools, which are supported by
proprietary frameworks and accelerators. THBS has a two-phased approach to agile training,
encompassing both internal and external programs that focus on first building familiarity with the
principles of agile development and then go into greater depth in specific areas based on project
requirements. The vendor has a relatively small consulting organization, but the consultants possess
long-term experience in agile and agile scaling. The consulting organization focuses on providing
readiness assessment, change management, and support for scaling agile through the enterprise.
The vendor's unique selling proposition (USP) is its intense focus on a highly customized approach,
which takes into consideration the client's requirements, current processes, and risk appetite to come
up with the ideal hybrid model that suits the client's needs. The vendor continues to invest in people,
training, and tools around agile that have the potential to bring about strong differentiators in the
future. However, investments in augmenting the consulting practice have been limited, which can
impact the consulting organization's ability to support the delivery teams.
Like Persistent, Virtusa comes with a long-standing heritage as a preferred provider of services to
ISVs and other high-tech clients and has been able to transfer best practices from its engineering
services business into its traditional ADM service lines. Virtusa's articulation of its value proposition for
agile shows an understanding of the requirements for an end-to-end offering. This is combined with a
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
customizable suite of proprietary and external tools, and a strong set of governance mechanisms that
provide a clear view of progress across agile engagements. The vendor's offering spans readiness
assessment, training, some amount of OCM, and actual implementation and tooling. Though this has
the potential to be a "package deal," there are some significant gaps that need to be filled before it
can be called a holistic end-to-end package. These center around the vendor's consulting skills, which
need more polish and better articulation, building capabilities around coaching and agile scaling, and
a focus on expanding the training programs to include external training affiliations and greater impetus
for adding more external certifications.
Rounding off the challengers in this ODM is Wipro, a large and well-known SI. The strength of Wipro's
value proposition is its frameworks, a sizeable consulting practice that combines domain and technical
expertise, a customer-driven approach to tooling, and robust training programs, both internal and
external. Though agile remains the prominent methodology in digital engagements, Wipro has been
slower than its immediate competitors to adopt agile prominently in its ADM business and is relatively
inconsistent in its efforts to move more clients to the agile approach. A couple of factors that do play to
Wipro's advantage are the robust set of metrics that it uses to track progress across the team, project,
and enterprise value delivered, and its ability to use simulations to identify process bottlenecks which
are then used to make changes (automation, tools, or other means) to improve efficiency and delivery
quality. Wipro earns some brownie points due to its heavy focus on becoming an agile organization
itself. However, the main task that lies ahead for the vendor is to articulate how the learning from this
internal exercise can be applied to large, transformative, client engagements.
Market followers: Distributed agile delivery models
Although L&T Infotech has been rated as a market follower, there will be many customers in verticals
like manufacturing, utilities, and construction for whom its particular mix of domain skills and agile
capabilities will be the right fit. One of the key reasons behind L&T Infotech's slower adoption of agile
practices has been its focus on verticals, such as those mentioned above, that have been slow
adopters of technology overall and are behind the growth curve when it comes to widespread
adoption of methodologies such as agile. However, in the verticals in which the vendor does have
major operations, it showed a solid understanding of business challenges and the role that agile can
play in resolving them.
There are, however, some major gaps in the vendor's portfolio, such as a robust and sizeable
behavioral and change management component, and though the vendor has made investments in
developing a consulting practice, it is still a fledgling operation. L&T Infotech also needs to work on
articulating its efforts around its agile practice, including investments in process innovation in the
application of agile practices. The vendor needs to take charge and drive agile initiatives in its client
engagements rather than simply being a delivery partner. This requires a more proactive approach to
pursuing opportunities in agile that leverage its strong technical skills and domain knowledge.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
Market leaders
Market leaders: Capability matrix
Figure 7: Ovum Decision Matrix: Distributed Agile Delivery Models, 2016–17 – Market leaders –
capability matrix
Source: Ovum
The leaders in the capability matrix category were Persistent, TCS, Infosys, and Cognizant. All the
vendors were assessed on the following three categories under the capability matrix dimension:

Agile utilization – The overall portfolio of offerings, measures taken to advocate agile
adoption, and the rate at which agile implementation is growing across the ADM business;

Project management & consulting – Capabilities to provide coaching and support to clients
around OCM, tools for assessing performance, and the ability to use these for guiding future
plans; and

Tools & training – Investments made in proprietary frameworks, collaboration platforms, and
commercial and open source tools and training programs to support the agile practice.
One of the major strengths of the larger SIs is their ability to draw upon years of experience in
managing IT for some of the largest organizations across highly regulated and risk-averse industries.
However, no single vendor emerged as the top vendor across all three categories.
Persistent took the lead in the project management and consulting category thanks to its mature and
practical approach to helping clients understand the business implications of adopting agile (or
otherwise) across transformative engagements. Despite Persistent being an outsourcer, its clients
highly value its consulting organization's pragmatic approach to building alignment across IT and the
business and its help in driving a coordinated effort to bring agility and flexibility to the enterprise.
Infosys came out on top in the agile utilization category thanks to its concerted efforts around
embracing agile as the de facto delivery methodology across as much of its ADM business as
possible. The enterprise-wide adoption of design thinking, approaches to identify and nurture
innovation (in both technology and processes), and the efficiency of the agile consulting and delivery
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
organization are the main reasons behind the rapid spread of agile as the prominent delivery
methodology in Infosys's ADM business. This growth is supported by relevant investments in training,
tooling, and client education on the benefits of "going agile" which, combined with a clear articulation
of the overall differentiating aspects of its offering, make Infosys's utilization rates one of the feathers
in its cap.
TCS and Cognizant were joint leaders in the tools and training category because of the depth of their
training programs, extensive investments in tools and external affiliations to support these training
programs, and the sheer variety of commercial, proprietary, and open source tools in their portfolios,
which all offer clients a wider array of customizable options to choose from. The top-down approach
that TCS has taken to ensure the agile mindset permeates its internal organization and client
engagements is a strong testament to its commitment to the "agile way." Its consulting/OCM
organization showcased a strong aptitude for taking positive and proactive measures to highlight the
benefits of agile, supported by hybrid delivery options, frameworks, and a desire to smooth the
transition for its clients from being a waterfall organization to becoming an agile organization. On the
other hand, Cognizant’s distributed agile delivery framework – Daikibo –offers a tested and
comprehensive roadmap for agile transformation that represents a major plus point.
Market leaders: Strategy execution
Figure 8: Ovum Decision Matrix: Distributed Agile Delivery Models, 2016–17 – Market leaders –
strategy execution
Source: Ovum
Cognizant, Infosys, and TCS are the overall leaders on the strategy execution dimension, which
evaluated:

Sales approach – Pricing and delivery options, processes and tools utilized to evaluate the
right combination of frameworks and services for the client, and metrics used to evaluate
progress and bring additional enhancements; and
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17

Innovation – Vendor investments aimed at augmenting existing capabilities, toolkits, partner
ecosystems, and training programs, and efforts around bringing more hybrid development
approaches, pricing, and delivery options to the portfolio.
All three SIs have well-defined processes and methodologies for identifying, implementing, and
tracking agile engagements across their client portfolio. However, Cognizant came out on top in the
sales approach category due to the aggressiveness with which the vendor is working towards selling
the agile proposition and the commitment of the consulting and delivery organizations to putting the
client's interest first. Also helping Cognizant secure the top spot was its willingness to experiment with
output and business value-based pricing models, thereby assuming a higher risk profile across agile
engagements, which is a step away from the traditional time-and-materials or fixed-price models
prevalent in the industry.
TCS gained higher marks on its wide array of tools, dashboards, and the very robust set of metrics it
uses to help clients form a transformation roadmap and continuously monitor engagements. These
dashboards are shared with the client, which enables a high level of transparency across the entire
project lifecycle. Another plus for TCS are its comprehensive training programs, which aim to regularly
update capabilities across the agile resource pool.
Infosys scored top marks in the innovation category for the concerted efforts it is undertaking to
embrace engineering practices across its ADM portfolio. This includes major investments in building
continuous delivery solutions, DevOps toolkits and dashboards, collaboration technologies, and
training an increasing number of its personnel on agile and related methodologies. Points were also
awarded for its efforts to leverage partnerships with software vendors to accelerate the pace of
development of applications and creating frameworks that can be plug-and-play add-ons for clients'
existing project management systems.
Market leaders: Market impact
Figure 9: Ovum Decision Matrix: Distributed Agile Delivery Models – 2016–17 – Market leaders
– market impact
Source: Ovum
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
Overall, we consider market impact to be a less important dimension in our assessments than the
capability matrix and strategy execution aspects. We have consequently given it a lower weighting
(10% of overall score) than the other two dimensions (which contribute 45% each). Nevertheless, we
recognize that assessing a vendor's market positioning, customer base, growth, geographic and
vertical expertise, and undertaking a survey of reference clientele are important parts of the due
diligence process. Within this dimension, we assessed vendors under the following categories:

Market evangelism – Vendor efforts to build thought leadership in the agile space and the
areas of investments earmarked for the same; and

Customer survey – We conducted an online survey of reference clients provided by each of
the participating vendors to get a sense of the efficiency and effectiveness of the delivery
organization and credibility in the marketplace.
Infosys emerged as the overall leader in this dimension with a marginal lead over TCS and Cognizant.
However, in the market evangelism category, TCS and Cognizant tied for first on the back of
well-rounded and quite comprehensive initiatives for developing thought leadership. All three vendors
are investing substantially in setting up centers of excellence (CoEs), co-innovation
platforms/networks with partners and clients around vertical and technological areas, and practice
centers aimed at bringing about process improvements to enhance the vendors' potential to be seen
as thought leaders in the distributed agile space.
In the customer survey category, Infosys scored the highest, primarily due to its focus on
cost-effectiveness and delivery excellence, emphasis on building a "one team" mindset between client
and vendor teams from the get-go, and willingness to take accountability for deliverables. TCS and
Cognizant were also rated highly by the clients surveyed – TCS for its consulting capabilities and
extensive array of tools, and Cognizant for its ability to help formulate a roadmap for transformation
and the talent for embedding itself as a partner in the transformative journey.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
Vendor analysis
Cognizant Technology Solutions (Ovum recommendation:
Leader)
Figure 10: Cognizant – overall positioning
Source: Ovum
During the course of the evaluation Cognizant showcased one of the largest end-to-end agile
practices and the capability to simultaneously run multiple large-scale distributed agile programs.
Cognizant's comprehensive set of offerings cuts across its vertical portfolio and encompasses:

Consulting and organizational change management (OCM):

Readiness assessment that enables client organizations to understand the level of
readiness of their IT estate and internal IT organization to support agile practices and
helps them establish a clear strategic roadmap for embracing agile transformation.

Agile coaching on best practices and change management, and coaching workshops
to familiarize client teams with the agile mindset and roles.

Development and implementation:

Development methodologies that use scrum, feature-driven development, kanban,
Lean, XP, and Cognizant's proprietary framework – Daikibo (see Figure 11) – which
combines elements of several iterative methodologies into a customized "package"
based on client needs.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
Figure 11: Cognizant's Daikibo framework
Source: Cognizant
Figure 12: Cognizant radar and gauge diagrams, distributed agile delivery
Source: Ovum
The ability to understand the requirements and issues of different verticals and bring knowledge of
global best practices is one of the key strengths of Cognizant's practice. The vendor focuses on
continuously re-imagining ways to help clients get the best out of their applications – moving from
incremental levels of performance efficiency to building new digital business capabilities. The agile
consulting organization frequently pairs with technical, domain, and industry consultants from
Cognizant's broader consulting unit and uses their combined skills to provide a solution that is
relevant for the client's industry and business challenges and is able to leverage existing technology
investments (thereby lowering overall costs).
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
Ovum SWOT assessment
Strengths

Comprehensive portfolio of offerings with a variety of customizable options that resonate with
a wide range of customers.

A consulting organization that has the necessary capabilities to help clients navigate the
change management aspect of agile engagements.

Strong domain-specific skills that are combined with agile delivery.

Comprehensive training programs that focus on inculcating behavioral aspects essential for
enabling transformation.
Weaknesses

Size of consulting team is inadequate to handle demands of a substantially larger delivery
organization.

Even though Cognizant possesses strong capabilities, certain clients highlighted a slight
disconnect between the consulting and delivery organizations that needs to be resolved.
Opportunities

Experimentation with differentiated pricing models has the potential to bring differentiation in a
cutthroat market.

Can leverage knowledge gained from large-scale distributed agile engagements across
multiple accounts.

Has the tools and processes in place to potentially industrialize its offerings for a wider
audience.
Threats

Competition heating up in this space as most offshore outsourcers are aggressively pushing
agile as an important part of the portfolio.

Ability to command premium pricing will begin to erode over the next few years due to
intensifying competition.

The issue of inconsistent customer experience needs to be resolved to maintain current
momentum.

A common problem within the industry is its high attrition rate, which impacts ability to retain
key talent for sustained time periods.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
Infosys (Ovum recommendation: Leader)
Figure 13: Infosys – overall positioning
Source: Ovum
Infosys is working hard to direct client conversations away from cost-benefit toward discussions that
focus on business value and developing engineering capabilities within the organization and
supplementing that with iterative agile and hybrid agile practices to deliver business and system
agility. To achieve this, Infosys leverages its global delivery network, proprietary tools, frameworks,
and platforms such as Virtual Scrum (see Figure 14), combined with a multi-staged, disciplined
approach to enable cost-effective agile execution. Infosys's agile consulting offerings cut across the
vertical offerings and are distinguished by their focus on:

Design Thinking workshops that help set the strategic direction;

Design factories to develop design and test concepts;

Design Thinking training that brings together business, IT, and, most importantly, operational
teams to develop a customer-centric agenda.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
Figure 14: Infosys Virtual Scrum
Source: Infosys
Figure 15: Infosys radar and gauge diagrams, distributed agile delivery
Source: Ovum
Infosys actively profiles its customers based on their industry, need for delivering value early in the
project, and current familiarity with agile principles to identify projects that qualify for transitioning from
traditional to agile practices. This assessment is differentiated in that it takes stock of operational
issues that often hamper large-scale agile adoption such as infrastructure availability to support
iterative practices, the acceptability of engineering practices across the business, and existing
communication and collaboration strategies and tools.
Long-term client relationships combined with domain expertise, well-defined processes, accelerators,
and proprietary tools such as the Infosys Virtual Scrum add more meat to the overall proposition.
However, Infosys needs to put greater effort into adopting output- and value-based pricing models as
these become increasingly popular with customers.
Ovum SWOT assessment
Strengths

Consistent delivery excellence and strict focus on the customer's business goals are strong
differentiators.

Availability of a strong suite of proprietary and commercial tools that offer clients a wide range
of options that can be customized to specific needs.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17

Very strong training program including external affiliations and certifications that can also be
leveraged by clients.

Combines domain expertise with agile experience to identify business challenges and needs.
Weaknesses

Customers perceive inconsistency in the quality of consultants across different parts of the
same account.

Performance-measuring metrics remain slightly below industry standards. Though they do
feed into a capability-building exercise, their role seems more suited to monitoring
performance to SLAs rather than an effort to "get better at it."

Lack of articulation of efforts around building a partner ecosystem to support large-scale agile
transformation.
Opportunities

Better articulation of consulting capabilities and where they reside in the overall agile portfolio
will help drive greater volume of transformative engagements.

Building capabilities around engineering services can help further refine current agile
practices.
Threats

Infosys loses out to agile competitors because it is perceived as primarily a legacy ADM
provider.

Clients highlighted high employee churn rates as a key issue to be addressed.

Pricing pressure is intensifying as competition ups the ante around agile adoption via
investments in tools and automation.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
L&T Infotech (Ovum recommendation: Follower)
Figure 16: L&T Infotech – overall positioning
Source: Ovum
Established in 1997, L&T is a fully owned subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro Ltd, a multibillion-dollar
Indian conglomerate with presence in more than 40 countries globally. L&T Infotech has been able to
leverage its parent company's presence in industries such as heavy engineering, manufacturing,
energy and utilities, petrochemicals, and construction and has established a solid portfolio of
capabilities across these verticals.
L&T Infotech's agile offerings include proprietary agile frameworks like Swift and GoAgile for
distributed agile execution; a repository of templates, checklists, and guidelines to jump-start agile
engagements; and a strong focus on delivery excellence. The vendor's overall portfolio around agile
does have some gaps, such as the lack of a robust transformation framework and change
management practice, which prevent it from being a well-rounded proposition. The vendor is making
investments aimed at filling these gaps, but there needs to be greater impetus around these efforts in
the short term to make them count.
L&T Infotech's investment patterns and its internal transformation initiative, which is being
spearheaded by new COO Aftab Ullah who recently joined the company, show that it is clearly
committed to the agile way. The vendor is planning to revamp its internal practices, processes, tools,
and technology over the next 18–24 months to ensure agile permeates the organization and helps
usher in greater focus on innovation and delivery transformation. If this internal transformation
succeeds, it will arm the vendor with the potential to become a successful partner for customers in a
range of industries that need to embrace digital transformation, from manufacturing to petrochemicals.
The vendor can leverage its position as a domain expert and drive conversations about the benefits of
agile across a wider range of engagements across industries such as construction, energy and
utilities, and manufacturing that are new to the concept of agile. To achieve this, the vendor has to
ensure that the drive for transformation is accompanied by concerted efforts to establish L&T as a
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
thought leader in the agile space and highlight best practices and success stories that can be
replicated. We have not provided a detailed assessment and radar and gauge graphs for L&T Infotech
because it chose not to participate in the evaluation process.
Ovum SWOT assessment
Strengths

Deep vertical and subvertical expertise in niche sectors within financial services, automobiles
and aerospace, travel and logistics, and plant equipment and industrial machinery.

Clearly defined agile transition framework, and portfolio of tools to support it.

Ability to deal with complex, vertical-specific challenges when dealing with agile
transformation.
Weaknesses

Lack of impetus to drive agile as preferred delivery methodology across large engagements.

Limited consulting and change management practices.

Lack of willingness to experiment with hybrid and nonconventional pricing models.
Opportunities

Ability to leverage domain expertise in sectors such as energy and petrochemicals,
manufacturing, financial services, and construction.

Clients highly respect the vendor's strong technical and domain capabilities and are willing to
partner if it agrees to take the lead to drive agile initiatives.

Ability to take advantage of increasing demand for iterative practices from midmarket
customers.
Threats

Competition from larger players offering a full suite of agile transformation services.

Agile vendors that lack L&T Infotech's vertical and domain expertise nevertheless eat into its
customer base, because they are perceived to be the experts in agile and digital
transformation by virtue of the sheer volume of engagements they win.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
NIIT Technologies (Ovum recommendation: Challenger)
Figure 17: NIIT Technologies – overall positioning
Source: Ovum
NIIT Technologies (NIIT Tech) was established as a separate business unit in 2004, before which it
was the software division of NIIT Ltd, one of India's leading IT and technical training institutions.
Specialization in select verticals is NIIT Tech's key differentiator; to achieve this it emphasizes
continuous innovation around its service portfolio and also possesses a variety of industry-specific
proprietary solutions. This enables it to offer customized combinations of solutions and services that
clients can leverage across their IT engagements.
Figure 18: NIIT Technologies radar and gauge diagrams, distributed agile delivery
Source: Ovum
NIIT Tech draws upon its "Global Agile" framework (see Figure 19), which is built on popular iterative
(including agile) methodologies and builds a layered program structure that guides its approach to
project management and governance. The framework consists of:

assessment toolkit
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17

distributed agile operational framework, templates, and tools

domain and technology models and frameworks.
A key differentiator is the vendor's ability to offshore approximately 90% of the work in large agile
initiatives under its industrialized agile model, while still maintaining the rigor of agile practices. The
vendor also has what it calls "agile in a box" capabilities – a set of preconfigured frameworks, tools,
and processes that it leverages in engagements where the client has little or no familiarity with agile
practices.
Figure 19: NIIT Technologies' Global Agile framework
Source: NIIT Technologies
The vendor also has a wide range of partnerships around tooling, which it is able to use to customize
its offerings. This, combined with a strong internal training program (being part of India's largest
network of IT training institutions is a big plus here), enables the vendor to help clients with their
tooling and training needs, which is a major part of its value proposition. NIIT Tech is also one of the
few vendors in this ODM who showcased willingness to enter a risk/reward-sharing arrangement with
clients and often ties in rewards and penalties towards its ability to deliver on outcomes – which is a
critical differentiator as agile practices become commonplace.
Given its domain expertise, the vendor actively advises clients on best practices and also participates
in the ideation process for developing new products and services. However, the depth of expertise on
the consulting and change management side remains a little weak compared to the competition. The
vendor also needs to better articulate its agile offerings to build greater visibility in the market.
Ovum SWOT assessment
Strengths

Deep vertical and subvertical expertise in niche sectors within industries such as travel and
hospitality, transport and logistics, insurance, and manufacturing.

Highly customizable frameworks and supporting tools to cater to clients with differing maturity
levels when it comes to agile adoption.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17

Ability to draw on extensive training programs offered by parent company.

Industrial agile model that enables extensive use of offshore resources while still maintaining
the rigor of agile practices.
Weaknesses

Limited consulting and change management practices.

Lack of willingness to experiment with hybrid and nonconventional pricing models.
Opportunities

The vendor's strong technical and domain capabilities open up avenues for it to drive
conversations around distributed agile as a viable delivery methodology.

Ability to take advantage of strong presence in markets like Japan, Middle East and Africa,
and Southeast Asia, where its competition has limited presence.
Threats

Competition from larger players offering relatively well-rounded suites of agile transformation
and consulting services.
Persistent Systems (Ovum recommendation: Challenger)
Figure 20: Persistent Systems – overall positioning
Source: Ovum
Persistent Systems started off in 1990 as a product development partner of major software vendors
and often worked on cutting-edge technologies. This helped it develop expertise in the product
development space. Around 2010, Persistent shifted its focus in response to rapidly growing demand
for a product-centric approach from the enterprise segment and over the last couple of years, it has
built a highly IP-led and solution-focused strategy.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
Persistent takes a heavily tailored approach to agile transformation that is customized to the culture of
each individual customer, with the goal of navigating the customer incrementally toward greater agile
maturity and adoption. The focus is on moving from incremental benefits at the team level to
embracing the cultural changes and discipline needed to become a truly agile and nimble business.
Figure 21: Persistent Systems radar and gauge diagrams, distributed agile delivery
Source: Ovum
Persistent takes a different approach from the competition when advocating agile methodologies and
does not shy away from opening up conversations about agile, even when there is limited customer
appreciation of the agile approach. Persistent leverages its position as not just consultants but also
agile practitioners (the vendor's internal organization is an agile shop) to help customers understand
the relevance of agile in a fast-paced market and uses best practices from its experience to help
clients embrace the need for cultural transformation in their journey toward becoming more agile. This
is a major differentiating factor and one of the key reasons behind Persistent's top scores in the
capability matrix dimension.
Persistent insists that all delivery staff have a basic understanding of agile. Middle management
(program managers and above) and the leadership team, for which continuous investments are made
around training, have a deeper level of understanding. This training program also comes in handy
when dealing with client teams that need to be given a quick rundown of agile methodologies.
Combined with investments in tools, collaboration platforms, and partnerships (like that with
cloud-based collaboration platform vendor Conteneo), Persistent is able to add dimensions such as
enterprise gamification to its agile transformation offerings, making transition easier (and "fun") for
client organizations.
However, the vendor scored relatively poorly on the strategy execution dimension due to limited
evidence of compelling customer examples, outside of product engineering customers and work. We
would also like to see greater evidence of Persistent's willingness to put skin in the game through the
use of more output/outcome- or business-value–based pricing mechanisms in its non-engineering
services accounts. Moreover, the vendor needs to work on putting together a stronger and more
consistent message around its capabilities, which will enable it to target a wider range of customers
across its chosen vertical and geographic markets.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
Ovum SWOT assessment
Strengths

Strong understanding of what agile means in terms of the wider organizational context and
ability to help clients realize full benefits of agile adoption.

Small but highly respected consulting organization that comprises a good mix of consultants
and practitioners.

Robust training and certification programs that support vendor's efforts to educate the entire
delivery organization about agile principles.

Partnerships such as the one with Conteneo add multidimensional collaboration and
gamification capabilities to agile offerings.
Weaknesses

Needs to do more to industrialize agile offerings.

Limited evidence of using experimental pricing in the ADM space.

Not very well known in the outsourcing space.

Lacks a robust set of metrics and tools to support program and project management.
Opportunities

Use its reputation for quality to win new customers – lower attrition rates than its competitors
demonstrate that Persistent is able to retain talent and, hence, maintain consistent delivery
quality.

The vendor's newly formed alliance with IBM will allow it to extend its agile development
capabilities to emerging opportunities in Internet of Things–related application development.
Threats

Increasing competition from providers willing to work on gain-share models.

Risk of losing out to competitors who aggressively market their offerings.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
TCS (Ovum recommendation: Leader)
Figure 22: TCS – overall positioning
Source: Ovum
Founded in 1968 and currently employing well over 340,000 people, TCS is one of India's oldest and
largest IT services companies. TCS's core value proposition for distributed agile revolves around
scaling agile practices across its clients' enterprises. This is achieved through a mix of consulting and
OCM initiatives to introduce behavioral change via training and team-building exercises. TCS's agile
delivery framework and toolkits and the TCS Co-Innovation Network (COIN), which provides access
to an ecosystem of various TCS customers, entrepreneurs, and experts from industry and academia,
further augment its portfolio. Another plus for TCS is its proactive approach to highlighting the benefits
of agile mechanisms to clients and willingness to work with them to smooth the transition to agile.
Figure 23: TCS radar and gauge diagrams, distributed agile delivery
Source: Ovum
TCS leverages its Accelerated Process Excellence (APEX) framework for end-to-end agile
transformation. APEX allows for reuse of customizable assets, which helps to speed up the
process-definition stage of the engagement. This offering also includes establishing an "Agile
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
Academy" within client organizations that are relatively new to agile practices to provide ongoing
training and coaching across various resource levels within the enterprise. Organizations that have
already adopted agile can take advantage of continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD), full
lifecycle tooling, and continuous feedback-driven planning to improve customer-responsiveness and
speed to market. TCS also leverages its investments in its proprietary Master Craft DevPlus solution,
which offers a transparent, trackable, and collaborative agile application lifecycle management
platform for use across engagements.
Figure 24: TCS agile transformation framework
Source: TCS
TCS's substantial investments in proprietary and third-party tools allow it to track a robust set of
metrics across its agile engagements, which are then used to make process improvements. Despite
these investments and its strong vision towards driving agile across the organization, the vendor
needs to bridge the gaps in its vision and execution. Some of the areas that require immediate
attention are inconsistencies in the quality of resources across accounts; the relatively smaller size of
the agile consulting organization, which causes bottlenecks in its ability to service the much larger
delivery organization; and lack of creativity around putting more skin in the game in the form of greater
use of risk/reward pricing mechanisms.
Ovum SWOT assessment
Strengths

Comprehensive and well-planned approach to agile transformation as a whole.

Investments in co-innovation, which brings together the vendor, partners, and clients to
develop best practices.

Broad range of customizable offerings to cater to clients at different maturity levels in agile
adoption.

Comprehensive portfolio of tools to support agile engagements.
Weaknesses

Gap between vision and execution that needs to be bridged to ensure consistent customer
experiences.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17

Relatively small size of consulting organization hampers its ability to service the wider delivery
network adequately.

Quality of resources varies greatly across projects.
Opportunities

Partner relationships, co-innovation networks, and investments in centers of excellence offer
wider options for customization.

Ability to analyze data from multiple agile engagements to identify and resolve process
bottlenecks for clients.

Ability to leverage its scale, market presence, and strength in key verticals, such as banking,
financial services, and insurance, to further drive the agile agenda.

Build stronger messaging around agile's role in its digital transformation portfolio.
Threats

Increasing competition around pricing and delivery.

Inability to retain key resources within engagements as a result of higher attrition rates.
Torry Harris Business Solutions (Ovum recommendation:
Challenger)
Figure 25: THBS – overall positioning
Source: Ovum
Established in 1998 and headquartered in the US, Torry Harris Business Solutions (THBS) specializes
in SOA/API, middleware, and integration. THBS is expanding its service portfolio to include integration
projects dealing with cloud, big data, and mobility that leverage its strong program and project
management capabilities and its hybrid agile transformation framework (Agile Global Development
Framework – AGDF), which brings together the best elements from various iterative development
methodologies (see Figure 26).
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
Figure 26: AGDF – THBS's agile transformation framework
Source: THBS
THBS works closely with its clients to develop clear articulation of business value and its priority
across all of its engagements, which is one reason why the vendor relies heavily on word-of-mouth
publicity rather than direct market messaging. Encouraging intensive client involvement and strict
focus on continuously improving the way the client's organization works earns it high points in the
capability matrix dimension (see Figure 27).
Figure 27: THBS radar and gauge diagrams, distributed agile delivery
Source: Ovum
THBS differentiates its offerings through its multi-pronged approach to agile transformation, which is
slightly different from standard industry practices. Its approach includes:
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
Socialization sessions to create awareness through knowledge sharing and informal games
around what agile is and, more importantly, what it is not;

Joint planning sessions to decide on the minimum marketable feature set for a given product,
with high emphasis on "listening" more to the client at this stage; and

Leveraging the AGDF and prior experiences to articulate the advantages of a distributed agile
model versus a co-located model.
This approach is supported by a rich set of proprietary accelerators and dashboards that provide
practical features and transparent metrics to simplify aspects of agile development and increase the
speed of adoption. The strong elements of the overall value proposition are THBS's frameworks, its
proven DevOps approach, and robust toolkits. However, despite THBS's strong emphasis on
consulting and change management and its team of highly experienced consultants, practitioners, and
agile evangelists, the overall consulting organization itself is much smaller than those of the
competition.
THBS shows willingness to be flexible and to accommodate customer needs: it does not advocate a
one-size-fits-all approach but focuses on tailoring the methodology to suit the customer's maturity
level and appetite for risk. THBS demonstrates its own appetite for risk through its efforts around
building pricing models focused on business outcomes and business value delivered.
Ovum SWOT assessment
Strengths

Strong reputation as a specialist in its areas of focus.

Deep understanding of the relevance of agile in different business environments and ability to
bring this expertise to customer engagements.

Well-defined processes and frameworks and a structured approach that demands client
participation (as any agile endeavor should).

Flexible service delivery models and ability to customize development methodologies and
pricing to suit client needs.
Weaknesses

Being a midsized vendor impacts its ability to compete on large-scale engagements.

Over-reliance on word-of-mouth market messaging is one reason for its low profile. This
impacts brand visibility across key markets.

Limited ability to invest in commercial tools and partnerships to support agile practice.

Lack of scale.
Opportunities

Expand efforts to establish thought leadership and further cement position as a specialist in
this space.

Cross-sell agile development services to SOA, middleware, and integration customers.

Join the partner ecosystems of leading cloud, big data, and mobile technology vendors.
Threats

Aggressive push from much larger competitors threatens market visibility of small players.
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
Market consolidation and acquisition.
Virtusa (Ovum recommendation: Challenger)
Figure 28: Virtusa – overall positioning
Source: Ovum
Founded in 1996, Virtusa retains its product development heritage which manifests itself in its focus
on engagements that involve the design and development of new products and solutions. In the early
2000s, Virtusa focused its strategy on developing skills within the banking and financial services
sector by productizing its services. With its recent acquisition of Polaris Consulting, a provider of
digital solutions to the banking and financial services sector, Virtusa has further deepened its
expertise in this area. The vendor has long-standing relationships with some of the largest banks
globally and develops digital online and mobile banking applications for them.
Virtusa's agile offering is heavily based on the use of tools, accelerators, and platforms to address
persistent issues such as inefficiencies, cost overruns, and delay in product releases, while
simultaneously speeding time-to-market and reducing complexity. Virtusa leverages its proprietary
agile transition services framework to help manage the transition from traditional to agile
methodologies effectively (see Figure 29). This is augmented by internal certification programs and
practitioner workshops that aim to inculcate the agile mindset in the employees. The vendor has also
developed DevOps capabilities to offer continuous delivery to improve production release rates,
reduce the number of incidents, and lower overall project costs.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
Figure 29: Virtusa's agile transition framework
Source: Virtusa
Virtusa's articulation of its value proposition shows a strong understanding of the principles of agile
and its relevance in today's digital business, but there are some gaps, especially around consulting
and wider coaching skills that need to be bridged for it to be called an end-to-end offering.
Figure 30: Virtusa radar and gauge diagrams, distributed agile delivery
Source: Ovum
Virtusa's consulting skills span a robust readiness-assessment framework, customizable training
programs that need more polish, and governance mechanisms that are fairly well-rounded. The
training portion relies heavily on internal programs with very limited focus on external and
industry-standard certification programs, which needs to be rectified. The vendor also needs to focus
more on building scale and capabilities around transformational coaching, and agile scaling to get
greater purchase in the C-suite.
A strong suite of proprietary tools, combined with external components that are customizable as
needed by clients, offers convenience and greater choice. The vendor follows standard pricing models
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such as time and materials and fixed price with a few creative approaches thrown in, but does not
exhibit much appetite to get skin in the game. Governance metrics offer an interesting combination of
agile as well as Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) best practices, but greater articulation is
required around how these metrics feed into actual initiatives aimed at enhancing capabilities beyond
training and certifications. Although Virtusa has established an agile center of excellence, most of its
initiatives lack the external visibility that is required to build a profile as a thought leader.
Ovum SWOT assessment
Strengths

Well-defined processes and frameworks.

Very robust set of metrics to track across the engagement, both internally and externally.
Metrics also combine CMMI best practices with agile, offering clients the ability to work with
familiar terminologies.

Strong portfolio of tools related to build automation, test case optimization and automation,
static code analysis, provisioning, and gamification that support the continuous integration
and delivery efforts.
Weaknesses

Strong push for agile, but agile is not the default.

Customer survey highlights an inconsistency in quality of resources (while some employees
are well versed in agile practices, others are not as familiar). This needs to be addressed
through a unified approach to training.

Lack of visibility across wider markets beyond select verticals and geographies.

Relatively small consulting organization with limited capabilities.
Opportunities

Develop or acquire strong transformative consulting skills.

Expand brand visibility.

Drive more concerted efforts to push agile as the dominant methodology.

The combined VirtusaPolaris go-to-market strategy brings a wealth of expertise and
engineering skills together, which has strong potential to open up new avenues for growth.
Threats

Intensifying competition.

Higher attrition rates impact ability to retain key talent.

Limited bargaining power in the C-suite.
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Wipro (Ovum recommendation: Challenger)
Figure 31: Wipro – overall positioning
Source: Ovum
Wipro is one of the larger vendors covered in this ODM and its agile offerings consist of a strong
consulting practice, a proven DevOps approach, and a well-rounded set of tools and frameworks to
support the agile practice. Wipro is running an Agile Change Management initiative across the
organization to instill agile skills and ways of working across distributed teams. This initiative is
supported by investments in developing frameworks around scrum, kanban, scrumban (scrum +
kanban), Lean, and extreme programing (XP) that have been adapted to Wipro's ecosystem. A
customized solution is carved out by leveraging best practices from across these frameworks and
methodologies to best fit customer needs.
Wipro leverages its long-standing global partnerships with key product and services vendors to
provide the right combination of commercial, open source, and proprietary solutions for its customers.
Wipro works closely with clients around people and process elements and often uses gamification
concepts to inculcate the agile mindset in client teams. Wipro also helps design transformation
roadmaps that focus on combining process changes with content and behavioral training programs for
client teams that leverage learnings from Wipro's own experiments with agile as well as lessons
learned from other global implementations. These factors add to its positive scores in the evaluation
(see Figure 32).
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17
Figure 32: Wipro radar and gauge diagrams, distributed agile delivery
Source: Ovum
Wipro also possesses a robust set of metrics that track performance across agile teams, project, and
enterprise value delivered. What sets it apart is its ability to use simulations to identify bottlenecks and
use that to bring in further changes (automation, tools, or other means) to improve efficiency and
delivery quality. Furthermore, there is an internal push to transform Wipro into an agile organization,
which is showing promise. However, better articulation of how the lessons from this exercise can be
used in client engagements is required.
Despite the heavy internal focus on becoming an agile organization, it is surprising to see that agile
methodologies are not central to the value proposition of the application services business – improved
efficiencies and cost savings are – and agile is only pushed to the forefront when the client shows
interest in it. This directly impacts the vendor's willingness to take more risk in the form of creative
pricing models that are structured around the notions of business value and outcomes. Wipro's
investments in the agile space revolve around several dimensions – people, physical infrastructure,
process improvements, and tooling – but the company needs to show how these translate into wider
engagement opportunities and how they can be leveraged to transition customers to the "agile way."
Ovum SWOT assessment
Strengths

Well-rounded offerings with potential to become an end-to-end package.

Flexible and client-centric approach to tooling and delivery options.

Ability to leverage best practices from across the business.

Robust set of governance metrics that track multiple points across the engagement.
Weaknesses

Limited penetration of agile in the traditional application services space.

Insufficient advocacy of agile methodologies compared to main competitors.

Lack of articulation around where agile fits into the overall service portfolio.
Opportunities

Integrate agile as fundamental to the value proposition, especially when dealing with digital
and transformative engagements.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Distributed Agile Delivery Model for ADM Services, 2016–17

Bridge the gaps between consulting and delivery to ensure all parts of the business deliver
the same message about the importance of agile.
Threats

Increasing competition from outsourcers who more aggressively advocate for agile.

Limited efforts around building thought leadership in this space.

Impact of attrition rates on ability to retain key talent.
Appendix
Methodology
All participating vendors completed a comprehensive RFI. This was followed up by vendor briefings
and additional desk research. Scoring of assessment criteria was undertaken in consultation with
analysts from Ovum's other practices where necessary.
Further reading
"The rise of the API economy is fostering digital business innovation," IT0022-000684 (June 2016)
Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting an Agile Project Management Solution, 2016–17, IT0022-000635
(March 2016)
Author
Hansa Iyengar, Senior Analyst, IT Services
[email protected]
Ovum Consulting
We hope that this analysis will help you make informed and imaginative business decisions. If you
have further requirements, Ovum’s consulting team may be able to help you. For more information
about Ovum’s consulting capabilities, please contact us directly at [email protected].
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