GuardIEn at R+V Versicherung

R+V - Company Profile & Abstract

The R+V's Point of Sales Applications for the sales representatives has been developed in a huge and complex GUI system called RUVISPC. This system consists of a number of sales applications for consultants. The applications are integrated into a central agency system.

The applications have been developed with Gen and they were delivered for OS/2 and Windows computers. In 1997 more consultancy applications had to be integrated and extensive maintenance had to be done. Because of increasing complexity of the integration and production updating process a project Change and Configuration Management (CCM) Redesign was established to redefine CCM, model management, integration and production updating procedures as well as organisational aspects.

Because of increasingly complex requirements for integration and model management R+V decided to support the new procedures by using GuardIEn

This report describes GuardIEn's contribution within the new CCM procedures. First the report gives a short overview on these procedures and GuardIEn's role. After that the experiences made by R+V are summarised.

The CCM Process

To optimise existing procedures for CCM, model management, integration and production updating were analysed and redesigned as one integrated process.

Software Product Management and Requirement Evaluation

Software Product Management (SPM) defines different applications as software products, which have to be build and delivered for the clients of the IT Department. Depending on product lifecycles and requirements a detailed release planning has to be done to create the change management scheme.

Optimising Model Architecture

Based on experiences made during former release production the model architecture for GUI applications was optimised to fit the CCM process. An integration model was introduced for better supporting integration testing. The new architecture was defined to GuardIEn. Additionally lifecycles for change requests and deliverables were represented in GuardIEn.

Model Architecture and GuardIEn Usage

SPM delivers evaluated requirements and well sized requirement packages. The packages are defined to be used in the CCM procedures and tools and are designed to represent coherent domain aspects at the same time. These packages are used for impact analysis and for detailing change requests. The change requests are then defined in GuardIEn including their life-cycle which was defined in the CCM process analysis. They are related to model architecture, models and deliverables. All CCM procedures are now based on change requests which are related to evaluated requirements.

Implementing GuardIEn

GuardIEn was introduced to RUVISPC as part of a detailed road map for implementation of the new designed CCM process. The implementation was started during the requirements evaluation for system release 12/97 in June 97.

This release was produced based on the new CCM process design. GuardIEn was used to support the defined CCM procedures which had been developed before to implement the central activities (which were described above).

GuardIEn was used especially for

• Administration of SPM results by using change requests
• Support of model management, integration, production update by flexible, R+V designed model architecture, lifecycles and migration rules
• Impact analysis
• Version control for deliverables and models

Experiences

• Support of release planning process
• Good representation of R+V procedures concerning CCM, model management and integration
• Increase of model consistency
• Creation of transparency across models, deliverables and versions
• Decrease of CE locking problems no need for trial migrations, GuardIEn job splitting, reduction of migration scope
• Automated migration
• Flexibility for changing CCM requirements
• Good Vendor Support
• Stability of the product

Summary

The GuardIEn usage helped R+V to optimise the CCM process as far as integration, model management and production updating were concerned. Organisational aspects which of course can't be covered by GuardIEn still remain difficult to implement.

Recommendation

When thinking about using GuardIEn the goal should be to optimise CCM. GuardIEn helps by delivering an efficient framework for automation of CCM procedures.

• Necessary resources and time should be planned in a road map
• The success of the road map's implementation should be controlled continuously.
• Don't neglect organisational aspects
• GuardIEn should not just be viewed as a better migration tool, it is best to introduce it as part of an optimised CCM process.