Web Development

SITUATION

Choosing a retirement plan is a complicated decision; there is a wide range of data that can support the decision making process, but if it is presented poorly all those numbers can do more to confuse than clarify.  The account executives at a leading financial institution had a variety of tools that were capable of presenting fresh and relevant data and pertinent retirement service information.  However, it was clear that advancements in web technology could be leveraged to present the data more effectively.

It became apparent to the company’s executive team that the existing retirement services demo application needed to be redesigned in order to meet the group’s presentation needs and effectively support future business objectives. The team also realized that—while the new application needed to be deployed quickly—the project requirements were not yet completely defined.  

SOLUTION

The retirement services division partnered with Digital Foundry because we had worked with other lines of business within the company to define requirements and develop on an abbreviated timeline.  When requirements and documentation are not complete for a project that needs to be turned around quickly, Digital Foundry uses an agile development methodology to deliver successful projects. This methodology allows new features to be added and prioritized with little or no delay.

To kick off the retirement services project, Digital Foundry recommended holding a brief workshop with project stakeholders and Digital Foundry project leads so that key features and functionality for the new demo application could be identified. The workshop also allowed participants to thoroughly explore the project requirements so that the right feature sets would be prioritized and key business objectives would be met in the required timeline.

RESULTS

By recommending an agile methodology that delivered quick results, Digital Foundry helped the retirement services team:

• Build to budget and timeline: The use of the agile development methodology ensured that our clients were always in control of the feature set and the timeline. Also, by having a clear and ordered backlog for the development work, the project stakeholders were able to prioritize key features so that they could have a release quality product on their timeline
• Build to specification: Despite the lack of available documentation for the project, an implementation workshop allowed us to gain a clear understanding of the necessary features and product goals for the new demo application. This gave us the ability to develop a tool that would meet both user and stakeholder needs despite the limited documentation.
• Streamline functionality: By working with the stakeholders’ to elicit their experiences with the demo application, we gathered the information we needed to simplify the administrative features and guarantee a refined experience for the end user.