A Long-term ODC of .NET development for a US Client

The project

Industry: tourism
Solution: enterprise management & e-Commerce
People involved: 6
Duration: 3 years
Abstract Technology responsibilities: project management, resources management, deliverables management, technical support

The client

This is a US leading software service provider.

What the client wanted

The client had lots of software development work, and looked for a services supplier which could provide stable team with strong management and technology capability to obtain the highest cost efficiency.

The system was required to manage resort activities such as spa, class, events, rentals, transportation and childcare, as well as manage staff and materials etc. It would be a best-of-breed, middle tier activities management system, fully integrated with their existing suite of products and interfaced to leading POS and Property Management System.

Business challenges

The system had very complex business logic - Diversity business led to hundreds of files for the requirement with over 100 models and 11 different authorization roles required.

Solution

Having analysing the client's situation and requirements, Abstract Technology selected the most suitable team that have years' of experience in enterprise management & e-Commerce development, and established an offshore development center for the client to satisfy the continuous software development needs.

In the initial phase of software development, the project manager and software architect worked with the client to identify the core business process, evaluate the requirement provided by the client to learn whether it was the best way to solve the business problems, and how technology could help to maximize the investment. In this phase, we focused on grasping the core requirement in the business problem domain to make initial estimation and plan, but not define all the requirements, to avoid frequent requirement changes. In the following elaboration phase, the whole requirements were gradually outlined and mutually acknowledged.

At Abstract Technology we strongly believe that free and open communication is the fundamental to the success of any outsourcing practices. When we wrestled with technical problems, we worked with the client, searching for the resolvent but not keeping them back. Quick response and quick execution to the client's requirement is also important, managers of the client organization no longer worry about making a wrong decision because they lack access to information.

Refactoring, which was always happen during the project development, is another strong weapon in Abstract Technology. From the code to the whole system architecture, we performed refactoring to mostly optimise the system.

In this project, Smart Client and BPEL were introduced to the development. The user-side windows forms-based Smart Client improves system response and error checking for user data entry. And the new Smart Client architecture is better on bandwidth. Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS) provides an XML-based process definition and execution language that enables the description of rich business processes without code changing.

Benefits

• The early visible progress was available to the customer.
• Quick response and quick execution to the emergent requirement.
• Capability and flexibility to vast business needs.
• The system's clear and compact architecture reduced maintenance costs.
• High risks were mitigated in the early phase due to the iterative development adopted.

 

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