Sdlc Case

This poses an issue and directly conflicts with the customer centric core value that we should be practicing, especially as a shared services company. The lack of regular communication with the customer is a hindrance on the quality of product that IT delivers, and needs to change. There have been several instances in the past where miscommunication throughout the SDLC process led to issues in the production environment of our systems, which is not something to be taken lightly in the insurance industry. These issues could, and have, led to our company being severely fined for being out of compliance if we accidentally implemented a form for a product that is not approved by a certain state (to name one example). One of the main reasons why …show more content…
Currently, we lock ourselves away, put our heads down, and get to work coding the solution per the requirements. When any questions come up, we tend to assume what our customer wants and, to some extent, empower ourselves on their behalf to predict what they want. This is not always the best course of action. Commonly, these assumptions will lead to more presumptuous solutions that will not accomplish what we are trying to do for the customer. In the end, it will be rejected by the customer if we make too many assumptions about what they want and force us to rebuild and delay. Due to the nature of our industry, this is not what should happen as it will adversely affect the company and could result in fines from the various state insurance bureaus because we chose to act upon our own gut. A way to correct this is through regularly scheduled checkpoints with the customer. When a piece of functionality is completely developed, and tested, we should schedule a review session to go over what was done and a quick overview of how it works. This addresses a few things. For starters, it is an affirmation to the customer that work is, in fact, being done. In the past, it has not been uncommon for a work order to not have an updated status on it and have it remain stale for weeks; or even months. This will ultimately make the customer feel like their project is not …show more content…
As previously stated by one of our newly acquired customers, now that we are servicing their IT needs, the process seems to have slowed down a noticeable amount. This is because of all the controls that the enterprise project management group has in place to monitor the status of various projects. This is something that needs to be severely overhauled. For example, every project requires a cost benefits analysis, a rough order of magnitude, a proposal, and a charter. These are documents that are produced solely to determine if the work that will be done is justified and will provide a benefit to the business. In several cases, some of these documents simply say the same thing, just in different ways. In the end, all it does is take up the project team’s time and filling it with unnecessary, administrative tasks. Eliminating some of these elaborate documents from the process will cut down the time that it takes for us to get from the point of first contact with the customer to actually beginning the work. Another correction that needs to be made is the trust that project management has in the actual team. Because they are so accustomed to running everything from start to finish, there is little that is delegated out from their decision-making abilities. In order to better serve our customers, there needs to be a change in how this functions. Instead of having to