The challenge.
In the late eighties, our
client a leading global provider of asset management solutions
began to experience a decline in their core legacy product market
share since it lacked the versatility and flexibility of the new and
emerging technologies. The product was mainframe-based and did not
provide online real-time information of the accounts and assets as
most of the operations were being run in the batch mode. Account
positions, trade settlements, cash balances, etc. could only be
updated through night jobs which resulted in significant delays in
decision making for the end investors, investment managers, traders
and brokers. The product architecture was such that it could not
interface with third party systems or external interfaces in real
time.
We were asked to develop an open architecture platform which
could provide an environment for them to build, integrate and
provide
competitive business solutions while still harnessing
the power and robustness of mainframes.
Our solution.
To perform the requirements
capture from legacy code, we had to rely mostly on the development
teams ability to mine the code and build requirements bottom up,
since there were few business analysts with the client for
requirement definition, test case build-up and validation. To ensure
completeness of requirements capture, the development team used our
in-house tools.
The Quality Assurance (QA) team got involved in the project right
from the requirements definition phase. This team independently
scrutinized the legacy code for test scenario definitions and
compared the results and findings with those of the development
team. Through this customized requirements gathering process the
team was able to easily validate
the detailed requirements
leaving the Business Analyst to focus on the overall
specifications.
The results.
We were able to provide the
client with the best of both worlds; a combination of mainframe
power and Internet, client/server interface and flexibility which
provided the following benefits:
Data access and update could happen in real-time for
account
management, trading and cash management
transactions.
End clients could build workstation business
solutions using the open
architecture framework APIs.
Real-time integration of legacy products with SWIFT network and
other
third party products, clearing houses, NSC, DTC,
etc.
Better decision-making capability for investments advisors
and
investment managers.
Customized requirement
definition process resulted in consistent,
accurate
requirement definition with minimal dependency on
business analysts
Testing automation reduced IT cycle time by
almost 20%, thus resulting
in better capacity
utilization.
