1

Cognitive Software Delivery Using

Intelligent Process Automation

Fernando Beno, Senior Consultant

Magesh Mani, Manager Consulting Suresh Ramanan, Director

Cognizant Technology Solutions

1.0 Abstract

Digital disruption is challenging the time tested traditional application and service delivery

methodologies across enterprises. Innovative technologies that currently flood the market make

organizations struggle further to cater to the increasing demands for swift, agile and precise IT

services. Traditional styles of Process Management and Tool governance to enable automation

capabilities are not empowering organizations to catch up with the rapid changes.

Organizations are increasingly seeing digitization on the same coin as Intelligent Automation as the

primary tool to drive modernization. They are in the lookout for efficient methodologies to ride the

wave. This surge in the demand for process efficiencies to deliver customer experience driven

business outcomes can be fulfilled by approaching SDLC automation with the aid of powerful IPA

techniques. This paper explores an innovative approach to establish an Intelligent SDLC

Automation Roadmap

2.0 Introduction – Problem Statement

Even after 30 years of IT evolution, both decision makers and implementers alike depend on manual

processes and loosely integrated tools for analyzing and providing, information to govern and deliver

software solutions. The lifecycle a software goes through, is still ridden with highly fragmented

systems that need manual intervention even for mundane tasks. Any level of automation

sophistication of these fragmented systems is not resulting in ground breaking outcomes as the

solutions are very localized and does not address the bigger organization needs

Intelligent process automation (IPA) is emerging as an industry game changer to counteract the

challenges through the concept of Humans and BOTS sharing responsibilities. IPA is significantly

increasing the reward while minimizing the risk in delivering quality products. However, as many

organizations are finding, implementation of IPA is not plain sailing due to complexities around

organizational maturity, clarity of vision and goal, initial investments and so on. The upcoming

segments of this paper intent to clear this haze and provide interesting bespoke approaches and

POVs on IPA solution provision and its implementation benefit realization

3.0 Proposed Solution

ADOP TING ‘D IGITAL F IRS T ’ S TRATEGY:

‘Digital First’ strategy has marked its place in every CXO’s portfolio. Its prime focus is to capitalize

digital technology trends for empowering customer experience, value creation and technology

adoption.

Under purview of digital umbrella, automation falls as

one of the top business priorities for providing enriched

customer experience. However, the ‘Digital First’

generation’s demands for automation are focused on

smart spend, user centric, analytic driven integrated

SDLC models

IPA as a platform proves to be a complete solution that plays an effective role in monitoring and

managing project milestones, handling rote tasks, playing advisory roles and performing process and

tool integration. This all-inclusive E2E solution motorized with technology and people experience

helps to march towards Organization’s digital first strategy

B ALANCING T HE G OLDEN T RIANGLE (P EOP LE, P ROCES S AND T ECHNOLOGY) FOR IPA

Preparing to excel in digital era, organizations are in a race to get more technology savvy assuming

that technology will bring more cohesion between people and process to develop software. This is

turning out to be a disaster. Some key facts that stand out are as follows:

Automation is about an organization’s outcome measured through integration of people, process and

technology rather than the number of processes executed in an organization, or the number of people tied

to process

A balanced approach with right mix of business, people

experience and technology in place is imperative

It’s not just about technology bringing a shift, rather it is a

hand in hand human machine partnership that should add

profitability to business

To make this triad work successfully, people with strong process background and technological

advancement is mandatory. This should be a culmination where process consulting groups closely

collaborate with technology consulting groups and leverage each other’s skill sets to enable client

achieve holistic digitalization. This automation solution powered with intelligence is the need of the

hour.

By 2018, It is expected that most of the world's

largest 200 companies will exploit intelligent

apps that use big data and analytical tools to

refine their offerings and improve their

customer experience

IPA is contributing at least 10% to the

revenue growth of early adopters

– Talent augmentation through intelligent process

automation - Cognizant

AN INTEGRATED P ROCES S & T OOL ARCHITECTU R E (PTA) AS A CRIT ICAL S UCCES S

FACTOR FOR FORAYING INTO IPA

A Process Tool Architecture (PTA) is a multi-level hierarchy structure with business processes on

the top, mapping all the way down to the nth level individual tasks of a System Operating

Procedure.

PTA highlights inter process linkages within enterprise

and the capabilities of tool to support these processes.

PTA also exposes the tools inventory of the enterprise

showing redundancies in tools and the organization’s

maturity/capability in utilizing them.

A Process - Tool Architecture (PTA) is key for Intelligent

SDLC automation as it cascades the IT Process-tool

blueprint to enterprise business processes.

A well-documented PTA can provide the following

elements that enables IA road mapping:

Activities involving heavy manual intervention and high

impact areas of SDLC

Inputs for a comprehensive risk vs reward assessment for an IPA solution. The maximum impact

zones at the process activity task level that can trace up to the Enterprise Domain business services

Enterprise IT policy, Procedures & Controls that need to be adhered to the automation solution

C REATING AN SD LC INTELL IGENT AUTOM ATION ROADM AP US ING THE P ROCES S

T OOL ARCHITECT UR E

Detailed assessment of client’s current automation capability is imperative to create a successful

automation roadmap as it helps to identify potential candidates where intelligent automation can be

Market penetration of machine learning capabilities

is estimated to be 5% to 20% of target audience by

next 2 – 5 years

– Hype cycle for emerging technologies, Gartner

By 2020, autonomous software agents

outside of human control will participate in

five percent of all economic transactions.

– Top Predictions for IT Organizations, Gartner

Industry Snippets

applied. In such scenarios, a Lean based IPA assessment provides a holistic review of existing

business processes, IT applications, technology landscape, data flows, hot spots etc.,

SD LC IN TE LL IGE N T A U TOM ATION C A PA BIL ITY M OD E L

An Automation Capability Model has been developed to evolve an organization’s capability progress

on Intelligent Automation. The Capability Model is a powerful tool in identifying and communicating

an organization’s vision on Intelligent Automation

The following picture depicts the Capability Model consisting of three levels:

The Capability Model can be adopted by the organization in two fashions.

Staged Automation Capability Model: The target automation capability levels are

established for the entire SDLC discipline

Level 1: I Can Do For You Level 2: I Can Think For You Level 3: I Know What You Want

Continuous Automation Capability Model: Each SDLC Phase follows its own target

capability level

The output of both staged and continuous capability models may lead to categorizing an

organization or a particular phase under one of these levels.

D E R IV IN G TH E SD LC IN TE LL IGE N T A U TOM ATION R OA D M A P

The Process Tool Architecture is used as the primary tool to conduct the current state assessment

of automation readiness for an organization. The following diagram depicts the three step process

to derive SDLC Intelligent Automation Roadmap using the Process Tool Architecture

7

The diagram below provides an illustration of how the ‘SDLC Automation Roadmap’ can look like by applying the Capability Model.

Also a scenario is provided on how this roadmap will translate as specific Intelligent Automation progression.

| Confidential

SC ENA RI O : I NT EL L I GENT A UT OM A T I O N T O I M P ROV E I NC EP T I ON P ROC ES S DI S C I P L I NE

C A P A BI L I T I ES

Organization x currently uses RequisitePro and HP ALM to manage their requirements. The GOLD copies are

maintained in SharePoint. They have an ALM suite that provides the IDE to integrate their design modules back to

their requirements in RequisitePro and ties the test cases in HP ALM to the requirement IDs. The business does

not use the requirement management tools and use JIRA to track their user requests.

They have a vision to provide a unified Customer Experience by establishing a solution to integrate the end user

experience requirements gathered through various techniques such as discussion forums, surveys, telephonic calls,

feedback emails into their SDLC lifecycle so that business and IT talk the same language and are addressing the

same problem.

The below table outlines the capability curve they can look to build as they trace the IPA maturity improvement

journey.

“I Can Do This For You” Solution:

Leverage the requirements coverage feature of RequisitePro to measure the traceability of requirements to test

cases.

Automate the process to generate PDF of the requirements and store them in SharePoint as GOLD copy after the

Deploy Gate approval for each project.

Write Scripts that continuously poll the version changes to requirements and alert the requirements owner of

changes at end of each gate.

ReqPRO and ADPART integration – ADPART generates test cases from ReqPRO tool whenever the requirements

changes.

“I Can Think For You” Solution (Builds on top of I Can Do this For You solution):

Analyze the market for a build/buy solution for tool that takes as inputs the UX needs from various sources and

different formats and creates a formatted requirement that aligns to the organization’s standards for a business

Idea.

Automate the queue management of the “Business Idea” train that alert the business owner of the status of these

requirements.

Create scripts that applies the “Business Idea” into a “System Requirements” template and validates against the

organization’s standards for a requirement entity.

Automate the queue management of the “Business Idea” train that alert the business owner of the status of these

requirements.

Create scripts that applies the “Business Idea” into a “System Requirements” template and validates against the

organization’s standards for a requirement entity.

I Know What You Need Solution (Builds on top of I Can Think for You solution):

Identify a system that can match the Business Idea against feeds from industry such as Bloomberg and look for

patterns of demand to conduct a SWOT analysis on the Idea.

Apply Predictive analysis algorithms to identify the demand for such a requirement in the future and match it against

the organizations’ strategic roadmap.

Rank the Business Ideas and provide as recommendation to decision makers on the market demand.

4.0 Implementation Details/ Case Studies

5.0 Summary and Conclusion

There are no apprehensions that IPA will exponentially increase the level of automation across all

disciplines of the SDLC. In fact, wide scale application of IPA on SDLC will send waves of

disruption across existing status quo models like Waterfall, Iterative, DevOps, Agile etc., calling

for transformation. It is a positive evolutionary change that is much awaited. The benefits will

manifest multifold in the form of reduced capital expenditures, optimized operating expenses,

digital dream realization, timely and accurate provisioning of IT services to challenging business

demands through rapid IT delivery, enhanced data safety, security and many more.

However, with so many benefits in line, IPA adoption rates are yet to ascend high mainly due to

the haze surrounding its implementation in SDLC. This is to be expected at the early stage as

evolutionary models take time to maneuver against the tried and tested models. The thought

process and framework presented in this paper intend to supplement and motivate consultants,

organizations in picking up speed in their IPA journey.

The future of SDLC automation lies in the strength of its evolution. This marks the beginning of a

period where Human intelligence centrifugally merges with unlimited BOT capabilities to unleash

the aperture to endless possibilities. We do not have to wish for it, It is already here!

References & Appendix

“A guide to robotic process automation,” Deloitte- Operations Articles,

https://w ww2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/operations/articles/a-guide-to-robotic-process-automation-and- intelligent-automation.html

“Intelligent Process Automation,” Cognizant – Latest Strategies, https://w ww.cognizant.com/strategies/Intelligent-Process-

Automation

“Automate this - The business leader’s guide to robotic and intelligent automation,” Deloitte Documents Process and Operations,

2017

https://w ww2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/process-and-operations/us-sdt-process-automation.pdf

“Understand the Impact of Intelligent Automation Services on IT Service Providers' Strategy,” Gartner Recommended Reading,

November 2016,

https://w ww.gartner.com/doc/3500218/understand-impact-intelligent-automation-services

“Talent Augmentation through Intelligent Process Automation, Smart Robots Extend Capabilities and Creativity of Smart

Humans,” Cognizanti – Volume 8 Issue 1 2015, https://w ww.cognizant.com/w hitepapers/talent-augmentation-through-intelligent-

process-automation-cognizanti11-2.pdf

“Intelligent Automation from Here to There,” Digitally Cognizant Blog, July 2016, http://digitally.cognizant.com/intelligent-

automation-from-here-to-there

“Intelligent Automation: Where We Stand - and Where We’re Going,” Cognizanti – Volume 9 Issue 1 2016,

https://w ww.cognizant.com/w hitepapers/bots-at-the-gate-intelligent-automation-w here-w e-stand-and-w here-w e-are-going-

cognizanti12-codex2096.pdf

Author Biography

Magesh is a seasoned Process Consultant with 16+ years of IT consulting. He has provided consulting solutions across IT Landscape ranging from Service Management, IT Governance, Globalized Process Standardization & Harmonization, Running IT as Business model, Application Lifecycle & Portfolio Management. He has a deep understanding of process governance across domains including Healthcare, Retail, Life Science and Manufacturing. He can be reached at Magesh.Mani@cognizant.com

Beno is currently part of Cognizant’s Process and Quality consulting practice. With more than 12 years of experience, he has led and managed consulting engagements across varied geographies focusing on IT process review and optimization, industry based assessments/benchmarking and operationalizing governance models for organizations. He can be reached at

Fernando.Beno@Cognizant.com

Suresh Ramanan is a Director- Consulting within Cognizant Business Consulting’s Process & Quality Practice. He has 17 years of experience in successfully leading and managing large business/IT life cycle transformation using Lean & Agile principles. Suresh holds a Master’s degree in engineering management from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS, Pilani), India. He can be reached at Suresh.Ramanan2@cognizant.com

THANK YOU!