Carr Systems Incorporated
Innovative technology, old-fashioned service
From Ad Hoc Coding to Application Management
Challenge:
After years of evolving their data quality mission, a Healthcare department within the DoD was at a crossroads. Data quality was eroding, systems were malfunctioning, and employee turnover negatively impacted daily operations due to disorganized application management and too many manual work-arounds. Carr was engaged to evaluate the problems and create an Application Lifecycle Management (or Software Development Life Cycle) plan to stabilize applications and move the customer's operations out of proverbial 'rut'.
Solution:
This engagement required the application of discipline and structure to a legacy environment that had become unworkable. To experienced technologists, this is not a new story. Over time, without an ALM plan to follow, applications become outdated, programmers turn code into a plate of spaghetti, and operations begins to insist on daily routine work-arounds just to get things done. As an objective third party, Carr Systems was able to diagnose the problems, document the gaps between business processes and legacy systems, and then create an ALM plan to bring core systems up to the standards of the organization.
Impact:
Within six months, we had made significant progress. Updated releases for legacy applications were in process, some systems were on schedule for complete modernization, back up plans were in place, and customer operations were now in sync with technology systems.
An important part of this success story was the willingness of the customer to focus on 'the bigger picture', not just daily operations. From a new product roadmap to release schedules and test plans to standards for system documentation, the customer adopted ALM as an important and necessary part of its IT strategy going forward. Carr Systems continues to provide ALM consulting to this DoD customer.
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