LeapComp - Sales Performance Management Blog

The implementation of a sales performance compensation system requires several steps, which are often referred to as the “System Development Life Cycle” or SDLC.  These steps include project initiation, requirement gathering, design, building, testing, deploying and maintaining the application.  No question there.

Each company and often each client with whom I worked had a different flavor of such methodologies.  Some work better in some cases, some work better in others, and I feel like some work particularly well for SPM software integration.  Software vendors often also have some flavor of a development methodology which promises to deploy their solution more quickly, but often by taking shortcuts.

The “SPM Delivery Model”, is my own version of a methodology to deliver a sales performance management system on-time, on budget, and without any defects.  The idea is to follow a repeatable process to manage the system deployment. What drives the need for yet another delivery model is that with an SPM system, unlike other type of software applications, the input and outputs are usually well known; we have historical data, we have compensation plans, etc.  Using a linear “waterfall” model is the best way to run into problems too late in the process.  Following an agile methodology or a rapid prototyping methodology can result in poor design and re-usability issues.

At a high level, the SPM delivery model appears to follow the waterfall model for the requirement gathering and design phases, and then follows a an agile methodology and a test-driven methodology for the build and test phases, where each iteration is repeated for each compensation plan.  Once every iteration is done,  the waterfall flow resumes for UAT, deployment and change management.

I will describe this in more details in my next post.