4-page Case Study - Posted 9/26/2006
Views: 840
Rate This Evidence:
Telecommunications Giant Improves Software Quality, Teamwork With Custom Methodology
More than 27.5 million customers look to Telemar to provide them with dependable Internet and telephone services. Maintaining its status as Brazil’s number one telecommunications company requires Telemar to sustain an advanced level of technological innovation. The company employs experienced software development project managers, testers, and analysts, but outsources programming. Missed deadlines and poor software quality caused Telemar to look for a solution. The company implemented Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Team Foundation Server, which it uses in conjunction with Microsoft Visual Studio Team Suite. With Team Foundation Server, Telemar can more easily manage and track the progress and health of its software development projects and improve collaboration. The result? Quality software delivered on time, and a vastly more predictable software development lifecycle.
Situation
Telemar is Brazil’s leading telecommunications services provider. The company supplies more than 27.7 million customers with local, long-distance, Internet, and data services. Approximately 7,600 employees work out of Telemar headquarters in Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte.
Maintaining an advanced level of innovation allows Telemar to retain its leadership role in the constantly changing telecommunications marketplace. The technology team at Telemar routinely completes complex software development projects; in fact, the company completed 160 projects in 2005. While Telemar employs business analysts, software testers, and project managers, the company outsources all of its programming to vendors across Brazil.
As in any software development project, success depends on clear communication and close collaboration throughout. The company found that communication and workflow between vendors and Telemar employees was inefficient.
“The process used to create a product directly influences its quality and its timely release,” says Lucas Senra, Software Quality Assurance Manager at Telemar. “Because our processes were undefined, teams weren’t well integrated, and communication was lacking, we found it difficult to manage projects and complete them on time. Even software quality suffered.”
Lacking a formal work process or methodology, Telemar employees used e-mail messages to manage the lifecycle of a project. The company had little control over the actual development and lacked visibility into a project’s health and status. Often, serious issues wouldn’t be discovered until the end of the build cycle, causing projects to be delivered late.
Telemar required a solution that would bridge the communication gap between employees and vendors. To improve the quality of its software, the company also wanted to implement a structured methodology that introduced outside developers to a strict set of rules and standards created internally at Telemar.
“We needed to be able to guarantee that all phases of the software development lifecycle were completed—and that they were completed without error,” states Eduardo Luczinski Jr., the Methodologies and Process Group Leader at Telemar. “Any errors had to be identified quickly, and treated in the early stages of a project to eliminate rework and additional costs.”
Solution
Telemar deployed the Visual Studio® 2005 Team Foundation Server—an enterprise-grade collaboration server that works in conjunction with the entire Microsoft® Visual Studio Team Suite—to help manage and track the progress and health of its software development projects and improve the predictability of software development. The telecommunications company then teamed with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner BHS to customize the methodology inside Team Foundation Server—Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) for Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Level 3—and integrate it with task-specific third-party products.
Explains Senra, “Team Foundation Server was the only solution we found that was scalable enough to support both .NET projects and projects built on other platforms during the entire software development lifecycle. Plus, Team Foundation Server is built on a flexible meta model that can be parameterized, allowing for the customization we needed.”
Telemar deployed Team Foundation Server in early 2006. Six months later, the entire Telemar IT team and its top development companies in Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte were using the enterprise-grade solution to work on 20 projects concurrently, seamlessly supporting as many as 400 simultaneous users. A secure virtual private network (VPN) allowed external vendors complete access to Telemar Team Foundation Server.
 |
| Figure 1. The customised methodology and integrations digital dashboard |
Using this collaboration solution, Telemar gains process methodology that manages the entire software development lifecycle, keeping projects on track and ensuring software quality.
Customized Methodology
The out-of-the-box process methodology offered by Team Foundation Server—MSF for CMMI—provides a complete set of software development processes, principles, and proven practices to guide its users. Telemar built upon these standards, expanding the feature’s quality-control capabilities.
Says Senra, “The new meta-model available in MSF 4.0 allowed us to easily customize the MSF for CMMI methodology already inside Team Foundation Server and adapt it to Telemar-specific conditions and requirements.”
The modified MSF for CMMI methodology implemented by Telemar provides a clear workflow for both internal and external employees through its use of checklists, tracking, and reporting. Projects cannot advance to the next phase in the software development lifecycle until the previous phase is completed correctly.
Integration for Expanded Functionality
Together with BHS, Telemar deployed and implemented Team Foundation Server in just six months. BHS then developed integration layers that allowed Team Foundation Server to interoperate with third-party products that add feature-specific functionality.
“The highly heterogeneous environment at Telemar makes it impossible for a single solution to satisfy every demand. Our best option was to deploy a kernel solution—Team Foundation Server—that would offer high visibility and control over the entire environment and integrate it with specialized tools,” says Senra.
The Telemar implementation of Team Foundation Server is integrated with third-party tools that perform automated testing, control source code, and manage project milestones. For example, the solution is integrated with the Visual Studio Team System Edition for Software testers, automating all testing tasks—including functional, stress, and performance tests—for projects written on the .NET 2.0 platform.
Each integrated tool uploads its results into Team Foundation Server, allowing the Telemar team to view all data in a single digital dashboard, as illustrated in Figure 1.
Increased Collaboration
Features within Team Foundation Server support expanded team communication, even across geographical barriers. Telemar integrated its solution with Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003, establishing a single Web site that internal and external team members can reference when working on a project.
The global, collaborative environment provides key issue-tracking features that are helpful to project managers and testers—and further ensure software quality. For example, testers are able to track the developer’s actions regarding assigned bugs and decide whether or not to accept the correction.
Benefits
The Team Foundation Server is a major advance in the evolution of project management for Telemar employees and contract programmers. The company has come to depend on the collaborative solution to manage and deliver complex software projects.
“Team Foundation Server integrates strategy with best practices, unifying top-down planning with bottom-up analysis of the stakeholder’s needs and providing a high-level vision of projects, process, and investments,” states Fabricio Fonseca Campos, Project Manager at Telemar.
Assures Software Quality
“The customized methodology imbedded into Team Foundation Server guarantees quality throughout the software development lifecycle and ensures that all steps in the workflow are followed and completed correctly,” according to Senra.
Eliane de Oliveira Graça, the Systems Analyst Specialist at Telemar, elaborates, “The ability to create customized methodologies helps us involve end-users in the requirements planning and validation stages. Team Foundation Server also enforces validation at each phase of a project so that bugs don’t propagate from one phase to another.”
By using the customized MSF for CMMI methodology inside Team Foundation Server, Telemar closely controls the software development lifecycle through strict checks and balances. The telecommunications company is able to audit external developers and increase the quality of the final product.
Raises Productivity Across the Board
“Team Foundation Server has allowed us to be more efficient during all phases of the software development lifecycle. It definitely reduces the time and costs of each project,” says Senra.
Team Foundation Server enforces an organized, consistent workflow and methodology to automate routine, yet time-consuming tasks. For example, most testing as well as all bug management—identification, fixing, verification—are automated through checklists created by the customized methodology in the company’s Team Foundation Server.
In addition, by assuring up-front software quality through its methodology, Telemar has eliminated extensive reworking. Now, developers deliver software close to completion, allowing employees to focus on new projects rather than redoing old ones.
Enhances Visibility of Information
Team Foundation Server acts as a data warehouse that collects real-time intelligence on project history, such as project status. This new transparency enables the Telemar team to respond quickly to obstacles impeding progress. The previous tracking process—a jumble of e-mail exchanges—revealed little in comparison.
“With Team Foundation Server, we’re able to see precise information about all the activities involved with a project,” says Luczinski. “Daily actions are automatically documented and loaded into a centralized repository.”
Features within Team Foundation Server provide integrated reporting, giving Telemar a realistic view into the health of a project. For each build, the company is able to see vital information, such as test results and the code coverage of the test.
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about Telemar products and services, visit the Web site at: www.telemar.com.br
For more information about BHS products and services, call 55 (31) 3071-9060 or visit the Web site at: www.bhs.com.br
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 is the world’s most popular development environment for designing, developing, and testing next-generation Windows®-based solutions and Web applications and services. By improving the development experience for Windows, the Web, mobile devices, and Microsoft Office, Visual Studio 2005 helps organizations deliver a variety of solutions more productively than ever before. Visual Studio Team System expands the product line with new software tools that enable greater communication and collaboration throughout the development life cycle. With Visual Studio 2005, businesses can deliver modern service-oriented solutions more efficiently.
For more information about Visual Studio 2005, go to:
msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio
© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Excel, SharePoint, Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++, Visual Studio, the Visual Studio logo, Windows, and Windows Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
