A recent report on Agile adoption by Gartner states, "in the 'new normal' environment of constant change, traditional project management's linear, freeze-the-plan and the requirements approach is quickly becoming damaging to achieving real results" and contends that change needs to be expected, not avoided, in managing application development.
A "Common Sense" Agile Approach
In the case of our insurance client, SCI recommended Agile development to achieve quick turnaround on incremental deliverables that could be rolled out to customers faster. Agile methods were leveraged to master the complexity of designing a solution that also retained legacy applications. SCI's common sense approach meant that the client was not introduced to overly complex Agile tools, nor complicated new processes; SCI's consultants did the heavy lifting. Working in smaller development teams, they focused on producing working code every two weeks. Design sessions were utilized to work closely with business users to define and document strategy for development and implementation while maintaining collaborative communications, involvement and user commitment throughout the project.
Technical Details of the Approach
The User Interface/User Experience (UI/UX) developers analyzed the client goals to create detailed wireframes helping in the layout of the new design. This step also utilized the Agile process to ensure all UI requirements were correctly interpreted and standardized. Using an open source framework, SCI built a template that is both intuitive and visually appealing and coded into xHTML compliant webpages. This approach produced compatible code to create the mobile applications for the iPhone and Android platform.
Web-based applications were built on top of a legacy mainframe architecture that needed significant updates to create new state-of-the-art web and mobile applications. API interfaces were designed and built to backend Oracle content databases.
Client Benefits from this Project
- High customer satisfaction from end-users and IT
- Website delivered on all major mobile device platforms
- Similar look and feel between new website and mobile devices
- Framework allows quick redesign to match advertising campaigns and to ensure consistency with other websites the company owns
- Re-work was significantly reduced by increased collaboration among IT and stakeholders
- Allowed stakeholders to make changes more effectively and were efficiently incorporated
Learn More About Agile
Common Sense Agility
Agile: Four Strategies for Adoption
Agile Testing: Built for Quality and Speed
If you would like our perspective on solving a challenge or need an extra set of hands on a project, contact us at sales@softwareconsortium.com.
