4-page Case Study - Posted 9/9/2008

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Shaw Group, The

Shaw Group Boosts Developer Productivity 40 Percent, Meets Growing Business Needs

The Shaw Group, a leading global provider of construction and related services, was growing rapidly—but its Java-based development platform hindered developers from being as productive as they could be to meet the demands of the business. So, the company migrated most of its software development to the Microsoft® .NET Framework. Also, Shaw moved from a variety of application life-cycle management tools to Microsoft Visual Studio® Team Foundation Server. By adopting the Microsoft platform and tools, Shaw increased development productivity by 40 percent and cut the time needed for specific functions, such as reporting, in half. The development team also has more confidence that it is releasing robust, high-quality applications that meet business needs. To increase these benefits, Shaw is now upgrading to Visual Studio Team System 2008.

Situation

The Shaw Group is responsible for the planning, building management, and maintenance of some of the world’s largest and most sophisticated construction projects, particularly in the energy, chemical, environmental, infrastructure, and emergency response markets. Just as impressive as the size of Shaw’s projects is the size of the company itself. The Shaw Group is a Fortune 500 company with U.S.$5.7 billion in revenues and operations throughout the world—and the company has accomplished all this since its founding just 21 years ago.

Developing the technology to support this rapid growth and massive business can be a challenge. Shaw relied mostly on the J2EE Java development framework to develop its business applications—for instance, an application that generates earned value for the company’s projects—which tended to become highly complex and difficult to maintain over several years of development.

“We didn’t get the productivity we wanted from Java,” says Jason Coursey, Programmer Manager, Information Technology, The Shaw Group. For example, the Open Source nature of Java development led to an open systems design for the database, which made the Java code base more complex and decreased performance.

Beyond the issues with Java development, Shaw recognized an inherent need for standardization of its application life-cycle management (ALM) tools—such as the open-source Concurrent Versions System (CVS), JIRA from Atlassian Software Systems, Microsoft Visual SourceSafe® version control software, and spreadsheets. “It was crucial to get applications into production as quickly as possible, and the ALM processes—for source control, bug tracking, and project management—weren’t giving us the productivity we needed to keep up with the business,” says Coursey.

Because Shaw developers worked together in teams, it was essential that they had tools that would enable them to collaborate quickly and effectively, regardless of where they were located. But Visual SourceSafe, which the team used to keep a project’s developers working on the latest version of that project’s code, was not accessible to remote developers. Because Coursey had to manage the developers’ work, he needed better tools than he had to automate much of the work of team management, such as creating automated reports on application status.

Coursey and his colleagues were also looking for ALM tools that would provide support not only for the entire software development life cycle, but also for the important interaction with end users and the line-of-business managers who were the “internal clients” for an enterprise application.

Yet another set of needs centered on compliance with the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) act, which requires companies such as The Shaw Group to maintain audit trails and standardized processes for activities such as enterprise software development.

“We needed to manage our software processes more carefully,” says Coursey. “We were using a variety of tools and solutions. We found those technologies difficult and time-consuming to work with, and they didn’t give us the end-state auditing we needed for SOX compliance.”

A small development team within Shaw began to use Microsoft® technologies—such as ASP.NET and Microsoft Visual Basic® .NET—for some modestly sized intranet- and extranet-based applications. Shaw developers saw great success with the Microsoft technologies—setting the stage for the company’s new development solution.

Solution

The Shaw Group found the alternative to its Java platform and collection of ALM tools in Microsoft .NET Framework and the Microsoft Visual Studio® development system. The company initially adopted Visual Studio Team System 2005 and Team Foundation Server 2005. Now, developers at Shaw are in the midst of upgrading their deployment to Visual Studio Team System 2008, an integrated ALM solution comprising tools, processes, and guidance to help all members of a development team improve their skills and work effectively together.

The development solution includes:

• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server, the collaboration server at the hub of the system, which combines project management, work item tracking, version control, reporting and business intelligence, build management, Web access to project resources and functionality, and process guidance into a unified team server.
• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite, an integrated set of tools for architecture, design, development, database development, and testing of applications. Shaw has been adopting the Team Suite tools incrementally, starting with those for its 25 architects and developers, and now including tools for the 5 database developers on staff.

The solution replaces the disparate and disconnected systems that Shaw formerly used for development, collaboration and source control, testing, and project management. A single intranet portal environment includes all of these functions and more, giving developers a single environment to manage the complete application life cycle.

The increased productivity we see from Visual Studio Team System enables us to keep up with the needs of our business. Our business is growing rapidly—but our development budget doesn’t have to. Jason Coursey Programmer Manager, Information Technology, The Shaw Group

For that solution and the others that have followed, Shaw has taken advantage of a growing range of Visual Studio Team System features. With Team Foundation Server source control, for example, developers have a faster, more responsive tool to manage the source-control process. Source control enables a team—Shaw puts up to nine developers on a project at any one time—to work together effectively on the most current version of a project, despite continual updates made to various parts of the project during the development process.

Shaw developers are using the branching features of Team Foundation Server to create “phased releases” of an application. With this tool, developers can work on a limited portion of the solution—called a “phase” or “branch”—refine that portion, and then merge it back into the overall solution, all within a single environment.
After development, developers employ the unit testing, load testing, and Web testing capabilities of Visual Studio Team System 2008 to refine their applications, to ensure that the applications work as required, and to confirm that they support the required number of users and meet other performance parameters.

In addition, Shaw has adopted the reporting capabilities of Visual Studio Team System 2008. Out-of-the-box components make it possible for Coursey to quickly create on-demand reports on tasks, software bugs, and issue-tracking associated with the team’s projects.

When custom queries are needed—for example, to view all tasks completed or updated for the current week—Team Foundation Server enables him to create those queries without the time-consuming task of writing the query directly to the database.

The company supported its initial deployment of Team Foundation Server on a single computer. Even as it both expands and upgrades its deployment, the company is continuing to host the solution on a single computer. “Because of the scalability of Team Foundation Server, we don’t need a multiserver environment,” says Coursey.

Shaw has seen so much success with Microsoft .NET technologies that it has standardized its development on the .NET Framework for most of its projects.

Benefits

Among the benefits that The Shaw Group sees from its adoption of Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 are faster and more effective development and application life-cycle management, including increased productivity, fuller collaboration, faster reporting, and easier compliance with SOX and audit requirements.

Productivity Up 40 Percent

Shaw has achieved its goal to boost collaboration among developers, consequently cutting the time and cost of application life-cycle management and putting applications into production more quickly and cost-effectively.

Coursey estimates that software coding and ALM processes are up to 40 percent more productive thanks to Visual Studio Team System 2008, saving the company time and money each year. “The increased productivity we see from Visual Studio Team System 2008 enables us to keep up with the needs of our business,” says Coursey. “Our business is growing rapidly—but our development budget doesn’t have to.”

For example, the unit, load, and Web testing features of the solution reduce the number of software fixes required at the end of a development project by 30 to 40 percent, resulting in a similar reduction in the time and cost needed to implement those fixes. Source control and branching allow development teams—regardless of where the developers are located—to work together more effectively. Also, developers can use Visual Studio to target an application for multiple platforms while largely reusing their existing code.

The faster processes extend to reporting and management. Coursey estimates that by using the tracking and query tools in Visual Studio, he has cut the time he spends preparing for weekly status meetings in half, saving three or four hours per week.

More Effective Development Boosts Reliability, Confidence

Shaw is also using Visual Studio Team System to deliver more reliable applications. “Load testing in Visual Studio has been very significant for us,” says Coursey. “It enables us to immediately identify large issues that would have gone unnoticed otherwise, until the application was actually put on a load in production. It used to be when we put an application out there we’d hold our breath waiting for the complaints. Now we have the confidence that when we put an application into production, it has gone through its paces. We’re not worried about 12,000 people suddenly calling to say it’s not working. That’s peace of mind.”

SOX Compliance Easier

SOX compliance is another need that Shaw has addressed with Visual Studio Team System. The company needs to generate, process, and store specific documents for each project as part of its SOX compliance program. The developers’ portal created through Team Foundation Server makes that process easier, by providing a single online location for that documentation.

“We had a variety of version control, tracking, and reporting tools before, and it was often difficult to know where to find audit and compliance information,” says Coursey. “With Visual Studio, everyone is driven to put this information in the same place. That makes it easier to get to.”

Other features of Visual Studio Team System 2008 also contribute to greater compliance capabilities. For example, the solution’s tracking history capability provides an audit trail on changes during product development.

Rapid Adoption Cuts Time-to-Benefit

Shaw has seen rapid time-to-benefit improvements from Visual Studio Team System 2008, in part because its developers have been so quick to adopt the solution.

“Our developers really rave about Visual Studio Team System and features such as branching and source control,” says Coursey. “When they first started working with Visual Studio and they saw what they could do with it, they were very excited. It has enabled us to adopt aggressive schedules for software development.”

One factor contributing to the rapid adoption of Visual Studio has been that it’s based on the highly familiar Microsoft tool set. “Our people have been able to adopt and use Visual Studio Team System without any issues at all,” says Coursey. “I didn’t have to go out there and convince anyone to use Visual Studio. They can be in the middle of a project with tight deadlines and still take advantage of features that they haven’t tried before, because they already know the interface. Visual Studio is helping our developers to remain excited about their jobs.”

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 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 2008 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. Interaction between developers and designers is enhanced with Visual Studio 2008 and the Microsoft Expression® Suite. With Visual Studio 2008, businesses can deliver modern service-oriented solutions more efficiently.

For more information about Visual Studio 2008, go to:
www.msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio

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 The Shaw Group products and services, call (225) 932-2500 or visit the Web site at:
www.shawgrp.com