Financial services provider: improved software quality

The Challenge | The customers of a financial services provider with international operations frequently complain about errors and a lack of stability in the end-customer software. The company obtains a large share of its revenue from this software. Bug fixes are used to resolve errors, but also introduce too many new errors. Errors reported by customers cannot be reproduced, which means that they cannot be remedied either. The status of the software documentation does not match the status of the supplied software.

Our joint approach | An analysis performed by the mm1 consultant assigned to the task shows that the amount of changes made due to low-priority requests is too high, and that these changes are often implemented spontaneously and too close to go-live dates. In close cooperation with the customer, the consultant introduces a Change Advisory Board, which shows the risks of software changes right next to the benefits. This results in fewer regression tests, and allows test phases to go ahead as planned.

At the same time, the consultant spurs on the development of all required test environments, and defines clear deployment processes and deadlines for the “code freeze” in conjunction with customer employees. This prevents test phases from being shortened or cancelled. In addition, the consultant recommends setting up a continuous build server to ensure software stability at all times. As a result, the quality of the end-customer software improves significantly, and the number of hotline queries drops by 40% within just nine months.