How can a team learn a system without documentation?
The previous vendor had left no technical documentation for the system or database.
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Case study · Finance & Insurance
Rebuilding Vehicle-Leasing Workflows from a Semi-Manual System
A vehicle-leasing company had moved from Excel to an internal system, but the system still required substantial manual input. Shinetech investigated the existing code and database, then improved the platform around the client’s leasing workflows.
- Client context
- An Australian vehicle-leasing services provider
- initial offshore team
- 4 people
- initial improvement programme
- 1 year
- application technologies
- Java and PHP
The situation
The business need and delivery constraints
The previous vendor had left no technical documentation for the system or database.
Customer, vehicle and business data needed reorganising as the operation grew.
Requirements needed to be translated from business ideas into designs the client could review before development.
Key Questions
What did this project need to address?
Which data structures need reorganising?
Customer, vehicle and business data needed reorganising as the operation grew.
How will the client approve new requirements?
Requirements needed to be translated from business ideas into designs the client could review before development.
The solution
The approach taken in this engagement
An IT consultant first analysed the requirements and established a collaboration framework. Investigation of the database and code, combined with frequent client communication, helped the team understand the leasing business.
How we worked
Engineering and collaboration in practice
01 · Delivery activity
Team formation
Formed an offshore team with one lead developer, one Java developer and two PHP developers. The lead managed the team and clarified requirements.
02 · Delivery activity
Requirements and demonstrations
Turned the client’s descriptions into technical documents or visual demonstrations for approval before development.
03 · Delivery activity
Review and testing
Used regular client meetings to demonstrate progress and review iterations. A testing server was used to validate new code.
04 · Delivery activity
Operational improvements
Improved invoice export and added payment matching, budget management and fuel-card import functions during the first year.
Technology and delivery context
Technologies used in this project
JavaPHPHibernateSpringJasperReportsExtJSTomcatMySQL
The result
What changed for the client
Delivered capability
The initial improvement programme delivered invoice export and additional operational functions.
Product outcome
The team took on system design and development responsibilities as the client’s technical team.
Continuing value
The original case report describes a continuing collaboration lasting more than five years at the time of writing.
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