Case Studies

Client: Allianz

Prologue:

VAMOS is a client-server application offshored by Allianz to Covansys India. The application, along with the related tools and server processes, is being replaced by its successor called Fleetware. During the sun-setting of the application, a case study on the success of the project has been done.

The following four phase approach was taken to do the VAMOS maintenance activities:

• Start Up Phase (Initialization)
• Knowledge acquisition and knowledge transfer Phase (Investment)
• Test CR Construction Phase (Assessment)
• Steady state Phase (Execution)

Start Up phase:

During this phase, details pertaining to Project objectives, Project plan, Project scope and Service level expectations were collected, analyzed and documented. Moreover, work related to Project staffing, Infrastructure and Environment requirements, Team orientation and Training were carried out. It was decided to send the team to onsite for an effective KT.

KA/KT phase:

The team reached onsite with a clear 3month KA/KT plan. After orienting itself to VAMOS environment, the team started with KA. During this process, the team collected all available documents, created all possible documents with the help of onsite team, had knowledge transfer sessions and executed a lot of test cases to get familiar with the applications.
Of course, one can not learn to swim without getting into water. The team did some hands-on exercises on the applications with the help of onsite team and it started gaining command over the applications. And after doing some sample CRs, the team mastered most of the areas of the applications. The team also extended its KA into other related areas of VAMOS, like the AIX server processes and production support. The team returned to India with comfort and confidence, leave alone the acquired knowledge. Another important point worth mentioning here is that the team while at offshore, also transferred the acquired knowledge to the rest of the team who stayed at offshore. In addition to setting up environment at offshore with the help of the personnel at offshore, connectivity from offshore to Allianz was also established. This enabled the team to keep up the momentum upon return to offshore.

Assessment phase:

The team proved its worth and demonstrated its capability by executing very well the list of CRs identified by onsite for assessment. The onsite team completely convinced with the offshore team agreed to move into steady-state with full confidence.

Steady state:

The project moved into steady-state, with an experienced, knowledgeable ONKO and an experienced, enthusiastic offshore team. The cruise was very smooth without any turbulence. Some of the factors that contributed to this success are discussed below.

Key success factors:

The right blend of experience, enthusiasm, technical and communication skills was the major success factor. Moreover, the ONKO mentored the team by providing clarifications, feedbacks, suggestions and appreciations. The involvement of ONKO in sharing information with the team was really outstanding. This included to the extent of providing background information in the document - be it Requirement Specification or Clarification. One can not afford to let go unnoticed the simple fact that the personal rapport between the ONKO and the team being another major success factor. During the course of time, each team member built up expertise in specialized areas of VAMOS. And this enriched knowledge helped everyone to work on tasks in one’s areas of expertise much faster and better.

Lessons Learned:

Though mail communications were very effective through out the project, oral communications by a way of weekly teleconference, introduced during the later part of the project also showed its own merits like exchanging secondary information informally in addition to building rapport.

Epilogue:

The case study has revealed most of the important activities that converged in the success of VAMOS.