Surviving the Economic Downturn

Transcription

1 Surviving the Economic Downturn By Justin Davis & Tim Andersen

2 A Brief Background Iowa Student Loan Iowa Student Loan is a nonprofit organization that helps Iowa students and families obtain the resources necessary to succeed in postsecondary education. Justin Davis Business Analyst Tim Andersen Senior Software Analyst/Developer

3 Overview National financial market turmoil forces significant changes for student loan providers Particularly for Private Loans Iowa Student Loan s innovative solutions 3 Time Periods used to illustrate change January 2007: A Project in Peril March-June 2008: The Financial Crisis Hits May 2009: Reflexive Agility Additional Illustrators Case Study: The Implementation of High Risk Fraud Alert FitNesse Persona-based DoFixture Example

4 January 2007: A Project in Peril A new team was formed to replace internal legacy system used for processing and underwriting private loans Submission of private loans already taking place through a newly-designed, external online application Old system still used for backed loan processing

5 January 2007: A Project in Peril The decision to couple New and Old systems Incremental conversion of functionality Very painful Coding new system to fit old system rules Slow movement Many road blocks Many hard-coded aspects

6 January 2007: A Project in Peril Additional Issues Language used in code did not match language used by business Lack of system vision Aligning the Business and Development teams Loan program hierarchy discussion Development team realized necessity of system created based on intentions, input, and language of the business

7 January 2007: A Project in Peril Progress continues to be slow during alignment process Development team increasingly attuned to needs of business team Business team attuned to architectural decisions made by development team Communication better with continued collaboration

8 January 2007: A Project in Peril 3 Crucial Changes Persona-based automated testing models using DoFixture Investment in reduction of technical debt Learning how and when to say No Advent of persona-based testing model Visited by Agile coach for 2 weeks Testing framework overhaul Defining personas to correspond to specific positions within the company

9 January 2007: A Project in Peril Persona Example: Bob the Application Auditor/Reviewer What about Bob? * Auditing and reviewing apps, collecting info & docs via phone & mail * Overworked * Keyboard What does Bob value? * Reduction of Manual Review * Auto-Mailing * Auto-Comments * Straight Forward Account History * System decisioning & business validation

10 January 2007: A Project in Peril Advent of persona-based testing model Use of DoFixture Allows tests to be written in plain English using business-specific language Now storycard introduction and tests provided could literally use the same language Nearly all tests written in DoFixture from this point

11 January 2007: A Project in Peril Investment in reduction of technical debt In the past the business team had tried to prioritize technical tasks Always at the bottom of the list Difficult to justify to business as team did not understand ramifications of debt

12 January 2007: A Project in Peril Investment in reduction of technical debt Many new stories contained hidden amount of technical debt Initial estimates often much lower than actuals Difficult to turn back when feature is mostly coded and needs additional refactoring to function optimally Addressing the debt Technical debt concepts notoriously difficult to communicate to business in terms of tangible value Apparent when future requirements arise that make use of refactored pieces Some tasks require no justification to the business team System maintenance and upkeep

13 January 2007: A Project in Peril Learning how and when to say No Continuous prioritization a necessity Can only be learned from experience Business team Changed mentality away from Yes because we say it should be so Increased focus feature s purpose rather than implementation Development team focused on solving business goals with The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work

14 March-June, 2008: The Financial Crisis Hits Clearly something amiss in national financial markets Collapse of Bear Stearns; credit market damage Failing bond auctions Credit ratings of bond insurers downgraded; debt looked riskier

15 March-June, 2008: The Financial Crisis Hits Impact from a bond-financed student lender perspective Investors weren t interested in purchasing bonds for which insurance could not be honored or trusted Some lenders forced to drop out ISL looked for alternatives A system to support multiple lenders and loan programs

16 March-June, 2008: The Financial Crisis Hits A New System Vision Must support high level of configurability Making the undefined configurable Some known requirements, many unknowns Thanks to the previous year s worth of work, system was a good position to take on significant change Most items completed within 3 weeks On the business side, new loan program creation took about 6 months

17 March-June, 2008: The Financial Crisis Hits A New System Vision Tracking of Funds Lenders would be providing money to fund new loan programs Additional 3 weeks spent configuring system to track funding based on loan types Dynamic solutions for immediate funding feedback Newly configurable design was ready well ahead of loan program contracts August 2008 first new program In less than a month, two additional new programs were added

18 Case Study: The Implementation of High Risk Fraud Alert Could the previous success of configurable loan programs be repeated for new requirements? High Risk Fraud Alert Fraud alert data provided by third-party credit service Requirement presented first week of November Implementation deadline was December 1

19 Case Study: The Implementation of High Risk Fraud Alert Could the previous success of configurable loan programs be repeated for new requirements? High Risk Fraud Alert New Requirements Re-write of credit parser Routing of alerts through system to be worked Allow some alerts to pass unnoticed on a configurable basis Initial estimate indicated a month s worth of work As work began initial estimate seemed low as additional requirements discovered Still coded, tested, and released to production by December 1 st Yes the results were repeatable!

20 May 2009 Reflexive Agility 7 new loan programs with 13 loan types were supported Release of new loan programs is now almost entirely configurable Time to release reduced to 2-3 days What was a serious bottleneck in January of 2007 is now the most streamlined element of the process Ability to add/change program requirements has been crucial to the continuation of private loan programs

21 FitNesse DoFixture Example

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26 Conclusion Important Lessons Learned/Guidelines for Future Success Ensure the business and development teams are speaking the same language Write tests in a way that is easy to understand Business-savvy developers; tech-savvy business analysts Development and business teams, with experience and trust, become one project team Paying down technical debt is a necessary and continual aspect of system design Prioritization is key Make the undefined configurable

27 Questions?