Building stronger software delivery: beyond deadlines, towards process-driven development

What do you do when legacy processes and fragmented systems begin to slow down innovation, increase maintenance costs and quietly start to erode the competitive advantage of your flagship software? That was the opportunity for our client, an established software provider. One of their key products is a platform that supports organisations with their day-to-day operations, including invoicing.

Team lead Sander, who led the project alongside partner Maarten, explains the situation: “While widely considered best-in-class, the client’s software had grown rapidly over the years. The software’s invoicing module was ready for a fresh, more scalable rebuild and the client initially brought in one of our experts for additional development support. Soon enough, however, the assignment revealed a bigger opportunity: to build stronger shared capability around requirements, UX and architecture. This meant we’d not only have to focus on our delivery, but also create strong foundations for the design, delivery and ownership of the software we were to develop.”

“Initially, we’d been contracted to help deliver a rebuilt invoicing application,” Seppe says. “A colleague of ours had been embedded in the client’s internal development team to make sure delivery would be on time and in line with modern software standards. It soon became clear there was an opportunity to strengthen the way features were defined, requirements were outlined and the development pipeline was managed — turning the module rebuild into the starting point for faster, more reliable delivery going forward. After meeting with the client, we agreed to keep the commercial delivery deadline as the top priority, keeping focus on product definition. This meant bringing in a four-person strategy team, spanning requirements, UX and architecture alongside our delivery team.

Consultant Ewout joined the product management team to help rebuild the new invoicing module from scratch. “Rather than working from the legacy app’s feature list, we went back to basics: the needs of end clients,” he explains. What do end clients actually need in order to invoice their customers accurately and smoothly each month? The old invoicing module relied on layers of hardcoded workarounds tailored to individual clients. The new module would be designed to be fully configurable out of the box within the application, with no custom code required for individual clients.”

The expanded team built on a series of in-depth interviews that had started earlier. “The key point is to understand the real, day-to-day workflows of client teams. It was crucial to make sure no stone was left unturned in identifying the features they actually needed, from invoicing processes to accounting set-ups,” Ewout adds.

The most important gains for the client turned out to be organisational as well as technical. “As part of our assignment, we worked closely with the client on product requirements, architecture and the development and release process,” Seppe continues. “Together, we built new capability around clear ownership of product features and roadmap priorities, moving from people-driven to a more agile, process-driven way of working. Process is the backbone of sustainable long-term development and predictable software delivery.”

Ewout explains how the introduction of new methodology changes, including set-based design and AI-supported requirements exploration, improved development further down the line: “Rather than committing to a solution early, we explore multiple design options in parallel and review them with the client and their end customers early, before narrowing down the final solution for execution. This allows us to define new, high-value features faster. This approach proved especially valuable when designing complex functions, for example invoice-split configurations for individual clients. It allowed the team to explore and validate options fast, without the need for expensive custom implementations.”

The first client to go live with the new software suite completed its invoicing setup in a few hours. “Their end-of-month invoicing run using the new module only took a matter of minutes,” Ewout points out. “This stands in stark contrast to the half day previously required. Configuration was handled entirely within the application, without the need for custom code.”

Beyond the technology improvement for end clients under a tight delivery deadline, there’s a more durable outcome to our work: a solid foundation for the invoicing application that the client can continue to build on. “The new invoicing flow is well documented and fully configurable,” Sander says. “We delivered on time and ran several handover sessions with the client’s own product management and development team to support their operational readiness. This is exactly where we always push to provide the most value: enabling autonomy over dependency, while introducing best practices that clients can continue to apply long after our assignment has wrapped up.”