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ROI Case Studies

QSM software intelligence turns tough challenges into measurable business value

Medical Equipment Supplier Resets Expectations and Stabilizes Project Using SLIM‑Control®

Outcomes at a Glance

  • Exposed 2+ months of schedule slippage per month of elapsed time
  • Identified 3–4 months of delay per month against quality targets
  • Revealed that the actual delivered size had grown 3× the original estimate
  • Secured client agreement on reduced requirements volatility
  • Negotiated additional time and budget to achieve the required product quality

Context

A major medical equipment supplier was developing a complex cardio‑imaging software system (BSR) with a team of 65 engineers. After 8–9 months of work, internal clients in Germany complained they were receiving incomplete and unreliable software, putting product quality and company reputation at risk.
The project never underwent a feasibility check using SLIM‑Estimate, and continual requirements changes pushed the system from an estimated 250K C++ LOC to more than three times the planned size

Barriers

  • No initial sanity check on feasibility or schedule realism
  • Severe requirements volatility, driving runaway scope growth
  • Incomplete and low‑quality software delivered to internal clients
  • No objective data to quantify the rate of slippage or quality degradation
  • Client expectations locked to an unrealistic plan

What QSM Delivered

Leveraging nearly a decade of experience with SLIM tools, the software quality manager implemented SLIM‑Control to measure actual performance and forecast future outcomes.

Using a small set of monthly metrics, SLIM‑Control revealed that:

  • The team was slipping two months for every month worked
  • Quality goals were slipping by 3–4 months per month of development
  • Final reliability would reach only ~55% of the target
  • Effort, cost, and staffing were in line with industry benchmarks — quality was the real bottleneck

Armed with this evidence, the manager demonstrated how expanding scope and unrealistic deadlines were driving failure. The German client agreed to slow requirements changes and approve additional schedule and budget room — enabling the team to halt schedule inflation and deliver the quality their customer expected.