A Scorecard Framework Proposal for Improving Software Factories' Sustainability: A Case Study of a Spanish Firm in the Financial Sector

Financial institutions and especially banks have always been at the forefront of innovation in management policies in order to improve their performance, and banking is probably one of the sectors that more effectively measures productivity and efficiency in virtually all aspects of its business. However, there is one area that still fails: the productivity of its software development projects. For years banking institutions have chosen to outsource their software projects using software firms created by them for this purpose, but up until a few years ago, the deadline for the delivery of the projects was more important than the efficiency with which they were developed. The last economic crisis has forced financial institutions to review and improve the software development efficiency related to their software factories to achieve a sustainable and feasible model. The sustainability of these software factories can be achieved by improving their strategic management, and the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) framework can be very useful in order to obtain this. Based on the concepts and practices of the BSC, this paper proposes a specific model to establish this kind of software factory as a way of improving their sustainability and applies it to a large Spanish firm specializing in financial sector software. We have included a preliminary validation plan as well as the first monitoring results. The adoption is still very recent and more data are needed to measure all the perspectives so no definitive conclusions can be drawn.