ALM Needs Assessment

Professional Services Case Study for Largest Healthcare Coverage in Alabama

Customer profile

Our customer, established in 1936, is the largest supplier of healthcare coverage in Alabama.
Estimated annual revenue: $3.5 billion
Estimated annual IT budget: $141 million

Business Situation

Our customer was in the process of implementing a best of class Quality Management Office within its IT division, when IT executive management determined that the: Lack of project management methodologies, templates and reporting, which caused a significant number of projects to be over budget and behind schedule.

• Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) methodologies, processes and tools needed to be defined and developed, including the selection and implementation of an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tool to ensure traceability of requirements through test plans.

The IT organization consists of 600+ employees, with all levels and specialties, including Program & Project Managers, Functional & Technical Analysts, Quality Assurance, System Architects, Operations, etc. With the goal of increasing its value to internal business customers, the IT group migrated to a matrix-managed organization, with technical and functional management structures.

Technical situation

The customer needed to gain control over its SDLC methodologies. Millions of dollars were being spent annually developing customized software, but the business units didn’t see derived value from these projects. The immediate need was to gain control of the existing projects through an Application Lifecycle Management tool section. Senior Management identified the need to develop a SDLC methodology, and integrate it into an AML tool to ensure future development of projects were managed in a repeatable, successful manner.

Solution

Working with the V.P. of the Professional Services Office, the Hamilton-Ryker Senior Project Manager began documenting requirements for the selection of an ALM tool. The new SDLC processes needed to be able to be configured into the new ALM application. Once the requirements were defined, Hamilton-Ryker Sr. PM developed documentation of best practices for the ALM tool selection, including the distribution of an RFP to the market. A Proof of Concept was conducted with two key ALM products and the benefits of both tools were evaluated to ensure the highest level of return on the investment. The AML application was selected and implementation planning began.

Benefits

Our customer was able to gain a significant number of benefits, including operation efficiencies; better ‘traceability’ between requirements and test plans, and cost reductions from taking current manual processes and automating them with new workflows. The ROI for the investment has a payback of just over one year.