Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11: BUILDING INFORMATION SYSTEM AND MANAGEMENT PROJECT

INTERACTICE SESSION: TECHNOLOGY (DST SYSTEM SCORE WITH SCUM AND APPLICATION LIFECLYE MANAGEMENT)

1.      WHAT WERE SOME OF THE PROBLEM WITH DST SYSTEM OLD SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENVIROMENT.

Some of the problems with DST System's old software development environment were that many of the processes for development and organization were manual and time-consuming. Managers were unable to easily determine how resources were being allocated, which of their employees were working on certain projects, and the status of specific assets. This meant that DST was struggling to update its most important product, the AWD, in time. DST set up a project evaluation team to identify the right development environment for them. Key factors included cost-effectiveness, ease of adoption, and feature- effectiveness. DST wanted the ability to use new software without significant training and software they could quickly adopt without jeopardizing AWD’s development cycle. After considering several ALM products and running test projects with each one, DST settled on CollabNet’s offering. TeamForge, for its ALM platform.

2.      HOW DID SRUM DEVELOPMENT HELP SOLVE SOME OF THOSE PROBLEMS?

Scrum relies on self-organization, cross functional team supported by SrumMaster and a product owner. The ScrumMaster acts as a coach for the team, while the product owner represents the business, customers or user in guiding the team toward building the right product. Scrum development helped solve those problems by accelerating the company's software development cycle from 24 months to 6 months and increased developer productivity by 20 percent.

3.      WHAT OTHER ADJUSMENTS DID DST MAKE TO USE SRUM MORE EFFECTIVELY I ITS SOFTWARE PROJECTS? WHAT PEOPLE, ORGANIZATION, AND TECHNOLOGY ISSUES HAD TO BE ADDRESSED?

DST got TeamForge from CollabNet as its ALM platform to unify its software development environment. They had to address that Scrum didn't work as well with DST's existing tools, processes broke down and the lack of standardization among the tools and processes used by DST prevented Scrum from providing its maximum benefit to the company.