HBOS plc - Design and implement a delivery framework
Situation
A development team within HBOS Corporate IT had been tasked with reducing the number of system test and unit test issues that arose during development; they also needed to improve the quality of delivered components and meet both internal and external audit requirements.
Charteris Role
Charteris has used a formal delivery framework on development projects for several years including projects for HBOS Corporate IT.
A well structured delivery framework aids teams by ensuring consistency across development; it promotes reuse of techniques and components, and enshrines best practice.
Charteris Consultants worked with HBOS to review the team’s current processes and delivery approach, and to formalise and refine these into a delivery framework. The Charteris team then worked with the HBOS development team to roll out the framework during a period of development, to ensure that the proposed solution worked with existing processes and roles.
Solution
Charteris was selected to work with HBOS to analyse existing processes within the development team, design a delivery framework, communicate its purpose and help introduce it during a phase of development to allow the client to get maximum benefit from the work. Charteris was aware that changing the way a team works can be challenging. It was important that all changes were communicated in a sensitive manner ensuring that benefits were explained at all times. This approach ensured that any resistance to change could be minimised.
Areas covered included:
- Systems Architecture Documentation Update Process
- Technical Design Specifications
- Formal Unit Testing
- Automated System Builds
- Documented Review of Code
- Team Roles and Responsibilities
- Deployment Planning
- Final Pre-Release Testing
- Development Standards
For each of the above, Charteris:
- Produced boiler-plate deliverables, to be used for ongoing use
- Produced completed examples and instructions on how to produce deliverables
- Guided completion during the first iteration of the framework
- Worked on feedback to improve the framework, where required.
The flexibility designed into the delivery framework allowed us to change it where needed based upon feedback from the first iteration to ensure that it more closely matched the business’ needs.
The delivery framework ensured that all IT staff were working in a consistent manner that met internal HBOS audit requirements and met, if not exceeded, FSA audit needs.
During this time, Charteris educated people about the management and maintenance of the framework to allow them to take ownership of the work at the end of the engagement.
Business Benefit:
Improved Customer Satisfaction Through Fewer Test Issues:
A measurably reduced number of system test and unit test issues, the automation of key parts of the development process and improved deployment procedures ensured that customers received quality releases in a shorter timeframe.
Improving Quality Through Automating Builds:
Automated builds have provided the ability to deploy code quickly and reliably. Prior to this work, a build and deploy was a highly manual process which resulted in a delay in deploying code to test environments or production. This manual work meant that the build process used for one build might not exactly match a previous one; automating this not only saved time and staff costs, but also increased the quality of builds, decreased the time to get new features to customers and ultimately improved business and test team buy-in.
Improving Communication With Technical Design Specifications:
The Technical Design Specifications improved communication among the team. Ensuring that all team members used a standard design format meant that everyone could understand what others were planning. In addition, design work undertaken by senior members of the team could be far more easily communicated across the business.
Several examples exist of the need for design change being picked up before coding started as oppose to system integration time. Picking up the need for change early is far less costly than once code components have been completed. The technical documentation was designed to provide sufficient detail that an external support team could be used, saving significant maintenance effort from the development team.
Compliance:
All documentation met FSA and Internal Audit requirements for Basel II software design.
Consistency:
The HBOS team also now more fully understand what a project entails as it follows a consistent approach that has been proven to produce high quality deliverables.
Ultimately, costs were reduced through automation and reuse, compliance was ensured throughout the process, the quality of deliverables increased and customer satisfaction improved.
Client Feedback
Brian Faskin, Development Team Lead, HBOS, said: “The framework which you’ve put in place allows us to formalise and standardise our approach when taking on new work. Obviously as work progresses this may need to be amended slightly but its flexibility will allow us to do this.”
Tony Fermor, Nexus Development Manager, HBOS, commented “With the delivery framework now firmly ensconced within the developers’ psyche, the returns have been significant, with genuine metrics being created to provide real evidence of process and quality improvement.
The work [Charteris] has produced has thus brought significant benefit to the Nexus project, a key project for the HBOS bank, and has reinforced, and built upon the structures already in place to create the quality platform I was wanting for the Nexus product and developer team. Well done and Thank you.”