Increased Quality and Customer Satisfaction

Problem: A major energy company was having difficulty managing its software projects. Projects were not completed on time and lacked quality. Thus developers were constantly fixing software instead of innovating. . This problem was compounded by the fact that there was no tie-in between their operations help desk and the development teams, so requests were lost in the system. In addition, the development process as a whole was ad-hoc, rather than a formalized and well documented approach.

Engagement: Over a two week period, Northwest Cadence performed an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Assessment to determine what they needed from their process. From this NWC devised a plan to implement all of the needed changes. NWC also performed a TFS 2008 installation and training so that the development team could take full advantage of what TFS has to offer.

Results: The organization created a Quality Assurance team, documented their processes and began using work items to track work. Today they have a tie in between their operations system through their TFS system, and all work that moves between the systems are prioritized and monitored by a change board consisting of IT and Business leaders. The cost of work has decreased and quality has increased, improving customer satisfaction.

Getting More from VSTS

Problem: The IT department of a global retail company had been using the work item tracking and source control features of Team Foundation Server (TFS) for a year, but wanted to better leverage the VSTS investment. The development process was classic waterfall. Testers had limited time to fully perform regression testing. In addition, the build and deployment process was manual and took over a full working day. Finally, the mix of new and legacy code was only fully compiled when moving to release, resulting in days of integration issues prior to each release. The goal was to move toward an agile development process, but it was difficult to know how to best leverage TFS in their new agile environment.

Engagement: Northwest Cadence evaluated the current development process and TFS implementation, automated the build and release process, and implemented agile best practices around TFS. During this time on-site, Northwest Cadence conducted formal and informal knowledge-transfer to ensure long term sustainability once the implementation and process design were complete.

Results: TFS was customized to support the desired agile methodology and began the move from waterfall to an agile process. The end-to-end build and deployment process ran in less than 30 minutes and was triggered by a single click, including new and legacy code (.NET, VB 6 and Cold Fusion), allowing testers to get new builds on demand. Continuous integration was set up for critical software changes and included database builds, automated tests, and deployment. The team was left with the knowledge necessary to continue better leveraging TFS, experiencing many short-term results, including automating the builds of their new projects and tailoring their agile process in response to post iteration feedback.

Regulatory Compliance and Knowledge Transfer

Problem: A medical research and development firm was required to comply with federal regulations covering computerized systems involved in clinical investigations. As part of the overall regulatory compliance initiative, the development department needed to ensure their development process would satisfy the auditors. The development team wanted the knowledge to make future modifications of the development process themselves.

Engagement: A senior consultant from Northwest Cadence worked with both the on-site auditor and the development team lead to create a Team System process template (with supporting team process) that would satisfy the federal requirements. During the engagement, the development team was taught best practices and techniques for modifying work items types to support long term reporting needs. They then worked on implementing the methodology with periodic support from the consultant for review and advice.

Results: TFS was customized to satisfy the regulations, and documentation for the development team was created. During the next several months, the process was used during the creation of their next software release. Future audits were passed without difficulties, and the development team was able to make their own modifications to the process over time, based on the knowledge transferred during the engagement.

Passing SOX Audits

Problem: A critical internet infrastructure firm had failed three previous SOX audits. They could not reliably account for changes made to their production systems which directly affected revenue (and changes to the system were not traceable to any person in authority). A fourth failure would result in complicated (expensive) financial and legal issues.

Engagement: Within a three day period, Northwest Cadence (NWC) performed an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Assessment to determine their processes and to understand where the breakdown was occurring. NWC worked collaboratively with the leads and managers from the database team in order to gain buy-in and support of the final recommendations which were a major issue in that the teams were not doing what they should have been doing.

Results: Upon conclusion of the assessment, the recommendations contained within were acknowledged by all members of the teams who then agreed to work within the recommended parameters due to the ease of use of the new process. The new process was documented and communicated to team members and they passed their fourth SOX audit.

Ongoing Technical Support Removes Roadblocks

Problem: A large financial services firm ran across periodic difficulties with both TFS and their development process. These roadblocks would crop up unexpectedly, and would distract and obstruct their productivity. Tackling these roadblocks without the proper resources and training wasted both time and money. Without knowing the intricacies of Team Foundation Server, and without adequate resources, this organization faced several challenges and delays to meeting their goals and milestones.

Engagement: Our technical support services at Northwest Cadence provided their IT department with prompt resolution to these issues. Whether by email, phone, live meeting, or in person, we were available as an extension of their team, to help them past the pain points and to provide education and training in order to move the development process forward. We guided developers through the resolution of problems and shared our knowledge to help the organization meet its business and development goals.

Results: With our help, this organization now rolls past roadblocks and pain points which would otherwise hinder their development process. Their limited resources are not wasted on slowly trying to track down the root cause of problems and instead spent side by side with us to quickly take down the roadblocks and transfer the knowledge necessary to become self sufficient. With consistent contact and established knowledge of their environment we have been able to go beyond their technical hurdles and dive into solving their business needs through improvements in their development processes.