Austin Klahn—CIO, Jeppesen
David Mann—CIO, Word & Brown
Douglas Wenz—Assistant Vice President, Fortune 100 Insurance Company
Austin Klahn—CIO, Jeppesen
What's your top priority for improving project outcomes?
Putting in the right discipline, putting in the right expertise, and putting in the right tools is absolutely critical. Using RAVEN software for creating system requirements has been an important step in this journey. One vital best practice of software development is to capture detailed requirements for new systems as accurately as possible. An effective requirements document leads to better software, with far less risk of unhappy customers and expensive rework.
What's the ROI for RAVEN?
In the software engineering world, an investment in improving requirements has tremendous payback as you go downstream. The later a software problem is found, the more it costs to fix it. In fact, studies show that a defect found after a system is deployed costs 80 times as much to fix as a gap identified while writing the initial requirements. That's why many software executives believe getting the requirements right is a key step in any successful project. We're looking for better tools and capabilities and processes that help us build better requirements at the front end. RAVEN can help do that.
What's the business outcome with RAVEN?
The RAVEN software streamlines the entire process of creating requirements, and helps detect errors early. Jeppesen first started using RAVEN in 2007. Today, R&D, product, and software test managers from the company agree that RAVEN makes more effective use of customers' time, and helps deliver better software that's more in line with their users' expectations.
David Mann—CIO, Word & Brown
What were you using before you brought in RAVEN?
Before RAVEN, we were primarily using Microsoft Word as our main communication tool for gathering and capturing requirements. The BAs liked to sit down and create all these beautiful diagrams with Visio, but it would take them a long time. And the minute something changed in the flow, they had to change the entire Visio diagram. That was extremely time-consuming.
Why did you choose RAVEN?
We needed a solution to help clarify exactly what the requirements are, not only for IT but also for business. We looked at several vendors, but once we saw what RAVEN could do, we were convinced. We chose RAVEN because it was the most robust and simplest program to implement.
What does RAVEN do for you?
RAVEN doesn't let you leave things to ambiguity. When you're sitting down, talking to the SMEs, you capture what's being said in a way that if there is anything missing, RAVEN would highlight it for you and enable you to elaborate on those points for more clarification. In fact, there is no room for misinterpretations. If you follow RAVEN's guidelines and patterns, it provides a path that captures the heart of the requirements.
Can you give me an example?
We have a project called AgencyPro®, which is a customer relationship management product specifically designed for our broker network. This is a crucial project for us. We did the entire requirements process with RAVEN. The level of clarity we got from using it was amazing. There were no questions about it once it got to our architect. What the business analysts captured is exactly what the customer wanted. We then reviewed the requirements with the customer for quick feedback to make sure we were on the right track.
What are the business results?
We have several projects that completed the requirements in RAVEN. When I compare those products with the ones where we used Microsoft Word, we see a dramatically enhanced level of productivity with RAVEN. Why? Since the requirements were documented inside RAVEN, it was pretty clear what the customer wanted. We don't need to go back and forth to the business representatives to know exactly what certain requirements mean because RAVEN requires that you communicate in a specific way and it doesn't leave any room for errors. It really saved time for us, which means it cost less for us to develop those products.
What do your business people think?
The best result is that what comes out of IT is exactly what was expected. When the business analysts sit down and gather the requirements with subject matter experts, they know now exactly what is involved. They cannot just say a few sentences and end the meeting with, "I want a system and those are the requirements."
What's the ROI of RAVEN?
Time to market is the most important goal for us. We like to save time and do everything possible to achieve that. We operate in a serious market with fierce competitors who continue to strive to provide the best service for our customers and for our broker network. Getting the product into their hands, on time, is our biggest challenge. Already RAVEN is helping us in that area because we can actually beat the clock and get our product in front of the customer quickly. Now, after just the first or second time around, we deliver exactly what the customer wants.
Douglas Wenz—Assistant Vice President, Fortune 100 Insurance Company
What do you do?
I am in the business design group, which is associated with the Project Management Office (PMO). My job is to help projects ensure they have reasonably good requirements. We elicit and document requirements early, sometimes in feasibility assessment and sometimes early in project implementation.
What are some of the challenges that you face?
We often become involved after many of the assumptions and requirements have already been made, and people are looking to move forward when the requirements haven't been properly articulated enough. Often there's not enough of a connection from requirements to a business need. Sometimes we have an issue with a lack of stakeholder validation.
What changes were you looking to make?
We wanted to go beyond just the typical Word document text requirements. We wanted to understand what the process flow was.
How are you using RAVEN?
RAVEN adds a picture to the words. It's very helpful.
Do you have any lessons learned to share with your peers?
We are having success using RAVEN for high to middle level requirements. When we have more detailed requirements, we have too many use cases and we lose the audience a little bit. On projects where we've started using it earlier in the process we've had more success than if we have a project which is more established and the requirements have already been written.
What do your users think of RAVEN?
We are getting better understanding and better buy-in to a project when the users see what we are doing—we see more active interest from the users. We are using RAVEN to show graphically where the disconnects in the process are. We are getting better buy-in now that we are capturing actual requirements.
What's your ROI for RAVEN?
We're saving time. We're also extending the understanding of the project so there will be less rework down the road.
