Situation Analysis
The Unlimited was dealing with common frustrations like slow lead times, keeping up with business demand, and silos forming around work and roles. After adding Warewolf to their toolset, they achieved the following results:
"Warewolf bridges the gap between gathering requirements and actually implementing them. It’s especially great for business process type projects where all stakeholders can work together to produce results."
Ewan McPhail, Development Manager
Challenges
The Unlimited was primarily using the traditional Microsoft stack and toolset to custom develop all their solutions. The triggered communications engine they had previously attempted to build was a highly complex system with an inherited over-dependence on business logic at the data layer level. In other areas of the business building complex applications was increasingly time consuming and difficult the more logic was added.
The developers were frustrated with translating business requirements and processes from a Business Analyst (workflows, state diagrams and documentation) into code that met the stated business requirements. This was time consuming and open to misunderstandings.
Business was having difficulties signing off on developed processes where they could not see and truly understand the rules and triggers. The logic was trapped in the code, which could not be used by a business person.
These challenges resulted in things taking too long to develop; even a small update to get something out was a slow and lengthy process. Work and people were tending to get caught in silos, with much time spent going backwards and forwards to understand and deliver on the business requirements. A lot of stakeholders were feeling frustrated.
External solutions were too expensive to license and support, pay consultants fees for, and too specialised to give them the value they needed.
How Warewolf Helped
The Unlimited used Warewolf to re-build and enhance their triggered communications engine. For the first time, they were able to build highly complex triggers and have the communication come full circle, instead of one-way broadcasting, quickly.
Getting started with Warewolf was a challenge in the beginning. Deep habits needed to be changed and a new approach to problem solving needed to take place. Once the role players saw what Warewolf could do for them, and how their jobs would be made easier, the shift was easy.
They recognised that there would be massive time saving when complex processes needed to be understood, developed, tested and formally approved. Business Analysts, Developer and Testers were able to quickly create a universally approved process.
One of the features that allowed this was visual debugging of workflows at runtime. Warewolf allowed for true collaboration between a senior developer and a senior BA to produce and approve a functional workflow in a few hours.
Results & ROI
Implementation of Warewolf was free and the support packages are flexible and reasonable. There was a huge saving in comparison to any of the other workflow driven solutions in the market.
Work that previously may have taken weeks of requirement gathering, meetings, reviews and final approval could happen in a day, or less. Developers and BAs saved in the region of 50% of their time because they could collaborate on real solutions, and easily work together to build it right there and then.
IT was again able to deliver on business needs efficiently and on time.
While the communications engine is still in its infancy, it is set to grow and enhance other areas of the business.