Home | Contact | News | imprint Contact ARZ General Rechenzentrum GmbH Tschamlerstrasse 2, 6020 Innsbruck Grasbergergasse 13, 1030 Vienna Anton-Melzer-Str. 11, 6020 Innsbruck Brehmstraße 12, 1110 Vienna Telephone: +43 (0) 50 4009 - 0 Fax: Vienna: +43 (0) 50 4007 - 5505 Innsbruck: +43 (0) 50 4007 - 1382 ARZ News 06/28/2016 EBP mg - The digital future is agile Right at the beginning of the implementation project, it was recognized that classic project management was reaching its limits in this project. The time between the detailed specification of the requirement and the provision of the modules in the classic acceptance phase (V-Stage phase) was far too long. As a result, there was an increased need for changes during acceptance, which in turn caused a lot of effort. In addition, it was often difficult to integrate necessary change requests that arose on the basis of feedback from the market. Therefore, at the end of last year, the decision was made to introduce a SCRUM adapted for the ARZ in the EBP mg project in order to meet the project requirements. The heart of the new project approach is the holistic integration of an agile approach from the requirements of the banks to the provision of the features. The project team thus has a direct influence on the development sequence in the ARZ by ranking the individual "user stories". In the project team meetings, the more important points are lined up and prioritized together, so that a “just in time” reaction to new market conditions can be made. In two-week development sprints, four independent development teams at the ARZ are developing small "shippable products" (i.e. fully tested functional features that can be used) in parallel. These are then coordinated with the banks in the so-called sprint reviews (also known as test head quarters) and made available in a permanent test environment. This ensures that early and frequent feedback is possible when the system is created. Fears that the quality of the software will suffer with this approach are completely unfounded. Because the features in the "shippable products" must meet the high, internally defined technical and professional quality criteria that are written down in the so-called Definition of Done (DoD). Only then will they make progress in an integration environment. Automatic regression tests then wait for the new program pieces there. "A high degree of automation in development tests is a basic requirement in the agile world and one of the key factors for success," says Marcus Nitsch (Head of TestCenter - AZTEC). The “proof of concept” for the new process model with small “shippable products” was implemented for the first time in the project with the requirement of the “gold finger”, ie authorization by means of a fingerprint in the Quickcheck app. “During the sprint review that followed the project team meeting, we were able to test the Goldfinger, readjust it and bring it from the idea to production readiness within just four weeks. That's what I call modern, agile software development of the future, ”explains Helga Grünbichler enthusiastically (Volksbank Vienna, project team member and member of the EBPmg steering committee). The last process step in the agile software development process is institutionalized continuous delivery - i.e. the fast, regulated production use outside of the release cycles. There is still some preliminary work to be done for this, but this should be a reality by the end of the year at the latest. “It must be possible to bring the database changes into production in short cycles with as little interruption as possible. This is only possible if certain basic requirements, such as dynamic SQL, are met, ”says Peter Plattner, head of the data and information management department. In the change management process, an agile change must be introduced in order to be able to maintain the high demands on our ITIL-compliant processes. With such a quick procedure, the “feature-based activation” of the individual functions is a further technical requirement. This means that every bank can decide whether it would like to make newly added function blocks available to the end customer. “The agile software development process is the basis and one of the most important building blocks for the strategic project digitization & sales support. The challenges and market requirements of the future can only be mastered through agile and agile provision of software, ”says Rafael Wariwoda, Managing Director of the ARZ. Alexander Pittl, SGL WebF @ ctory back © ARZ General Computing Center GmbH