Case Study #3 - Coping with Peaks in Demand

The Client: A major manufacturer whose products combine physical equipment, electronic hardware, firmware and software. They have their own sizable software departments responsible for the development and testing of new product lines. The bulk of their sales are in the form of large contracts requiring individual tailoring of their generic systems.

The Challenge: Contracts are not always won at a conveniently steady pace, so there tends to be peaks and troughs in the workload. This gives rise to a common dilemma - how to cope with the peaks in demand without turning away business, while avoiding excessive idle capacity and expense during slacker periods.

The client wished to increase its flexibility and reduce the strain on its own developers, by outsourcing some of its software and firmware development during its busiest periods. The challenge was to ensure that the outsourced work would be reliable and delivered on time. A long learning period, or excessive reliance on the client's staff for training and orientation, would defeat the object of the exercise.

The Solution: LeoTel Software Systems was able to identify a number of areas peripheral to the mainstream of development work, and clearly appropriate for outsourcing. These included:

• Enhancements to existing products, when required for new contracts.
• Development or enhancement of tools and test equipment such as simulators.
• Investigation of known faults, particularly those that were difficult to diagnose.

LeoTel Software Systems offered a flexible framework whereby the client could draw on these services as and when needed, within pre-agreed limits. In addition, certain modules within the client's main ongoing product development were recognised as suitable for separate, parallel development by LeoTel Software Systems. In this case the development and integration phases were planned and scheduled very carefully in advance.

The professionalism and breadth of experience of LeoTel Software Systems' engineers was crucial in enabling then to undertake such a variety of responsibilities with confidence. By lifting some of the workload, and taking care of various distracting less tasks, LeoTel Software Systems freed the client to concentrate on the vital job of completing a major new development on time.