Defining Software Development & Delivery Processes

A Success Story in IT Process Improvement

When a large specialty insurance company needed to bring new products to market more quickly and cost-efficiently, Perot Systems delivered—defining and redesigning processes, reducing software development costs, accelerating time-to-market, and creating competitive advantage for the customer.

The Challenge

Facing competitive pressures, Perot Systems’ customer sought to accelerate delivery of new insurance products to market. Yet inefficiencies in the customer’s software development processes—including a failure to document and consistently follow prescribed processes—resulted in poor process visibility, delays in time-to-market, and budget overruns. Compounding these problems was the customer’s transition from mainframe to web-based architecture and systems.

The Solution

The insurer selected Perot Systems to identify and implement the processes and best practices that would help it control costs, boost efficiencies, shorten time-to-market, and gain competitive advantage.

Collaborating with the customer, Perot Systems identified two primary objectives: 

1. Define and document repeatable software lifecycle development  processes 
2. Develop a strategy for phased implementation of new processes

Time was a major constraint. In addition to the new-product software development projects, the customer had numerous existing projects in progress. 

Perot Systems worked closely with the customer to establish a software lifecycle development process as the foundation for projects. By reviewing the customer’s existing processes and interviewing its development teams, Perot Systems consultants identified the processes that were being followed.

And by taking into account the corporate culture, level of maturity, complexity of development, and size of development teams, the consultants were able to draw from Perot Systems’ repository of best practices to adapt proven processes to the customer’s needs.

Over several weeks, Perot Systems continued to collaborate with the customer, further customizing and reviewing processes, planning a high-level implementation strategy, and mentoring the customer through all phases of the engagement.

Perot Systems helped the insurer meet its needs through:  

• Environment planning 
• Configuration management plan and process 
• Software development 
• Deployment and support 
• Defect tracking and correction 
•  Change management

The Results

Through its expertise and experience in business process optimization, Perot Systems helped the customer: 

• Increase visibility, transparency, and consistency of software development processes 
• Implement proven methodologies and best practices for software development  
• Improve process efficiency and accelerate time-to-market 
• Control costs and contain projects within budget  
• Gain competitive advantage

Solutions for the insurance industry

Consulting Solutions  

• Strategic IT Assessment 
• TCO and ROI Analysis 
• Project, Program,  and Transition Management 
• Quality Assurance Programs   (ISO, CMMI, Six Sigma)

Business Process Solutions  

• Business Process Design   & Re-Engineering 
• Claims Processing 
• Finance and Accounting  Process Assessment 
• Order-to-Cash and Procure-to-Pay  Processing 
• Document Management

Applications Solutions  

• Application Development 
    • Application/Architecture Assessment 
    • Enterprise Application Integration 
    • Package Implementation 
    • Web Enabling 
• Application Management
• Application Migration and Reengineering 
• Application Testing

Infrastructure Solutions

• Infrastructure Assessment 
• Infrastructure Implementation  & Migration 
• Program Management 
• IT Service Management 
• Systems Automation 
• Information Assurance Services 
• Web Hosting 
• Enterprise Computing 
   • Data Center Facilities 
   •  Mainframe Systems Services 
   •  Midrange Systems Services 
   •  Utility Computing 
• End-User Computing 
   •  Workspace Management 
   •  Messaging