Agility is key for SCC

SCC It is a well known fact that once businesses have committed to deploy an enterprise mobility solution, the quicker it can be deployed the quicker those all important benefits can be crystallised. However in the most of cases deployment can be a lengthy process of anything between 3 to 9 months.

So is agile deployment just a myth or is it practically possible?

Background

SCC, which is a leading technology solutions provider across the UK and Europe, has rolled out a mobility solution for its team of 400 field-based engineers, with the implementation moving from project design to live solution in just 30 days. The TBS-developed system was constructed using the TBS TaskMaster Studio Rapid Application Development platform.

The new solution replaced an existing mobility solution that was proving problematic with regards to reliability, functionality and the ongoing cost. Their new TaskMaster solution provides real time work scheduling and communication capabilities for each field worker via a Windows Mobile device.

The project

To ensure that the project made the most of the time available it was imperative that the development teams from TBS and SCC worked in the same office. "This was a very unusual situation, in that we needed to move from drawing board to full rollout very rapidly" recalls Paul Everatt, European CIO for SCC. Also, rather than adopting the typical to and fro functional specification process, the required functionality was split into small manageable modules, a working prototype was created for each module in turn, agreed and then signed off by both teams.

Using this agile process meant that SCC workflow requirements could be communicated directly to the TBS team resulting in the delivery of the functional requirements and interface in just 10 days. "Due to a combination of project management and technical expertise from TBS, and the way in which we were able to work together, we achieved a huge amount in a short space of time. For instance, we managed to build our PDA application in three days flat, all because of the studio software that TBS has available, which you can run on a PC," explained Everatt. After the development teams had successfully completed their own end to end testing, a number of people from the business carried out three days of intensive acceptance testing. The development teams continued working alongside the business testers to allow for rapid change should it have been required.

This rapid development process acted as a catalyst for the success of the project overall, "It enabled the rest of the team to join in enthusiastically and really push the project forward to meet the tight deadlines and ultimately meet an array of challenges from the design through to the testing and rollout phase, all of which were overcome for a successful result," continued Everett.

Background

The project

News

OUR SERVICES

CASE STUDIES

SECTORS