Centric

The Business Need

A specialty personal property and casualty insurance coverage including motorcycle, recreational vehicle, snow mobile, watercraft and collectible automobiles.  The company sought to implement a specialized ERP system, which involved the configuration, data conversion and interfacing efforts typical of such projects.  At the same time, the company was in the midst of an online business process automation project for policy administration, billing and agency management.  During this complex effort, the project was missing deadlines, experiencing cost overruns and many project deliverables were of poor quality.

The Right Partner

Centric was invited to work with their team to help further refine the requirements definition process, coach their Business Analysts on requirements and RUP methodology, and to participate in the artifact creation process for requirements definition.

A Better Way

Centric delivered recommendations regarding the requirements definition process to senior client management including the CIO, various Enterprise Architects and the PMO.  Centric also assisted in the implementation of numerous modifications to the organizational requirements management plan, processes and artifacts to improve speed, efficiency and understandability of system requirements.  The scope of Centric’s involvement included:

• Scenario based requirements testing to ensure quality and increase integration with downstream testing effort
• Mentoring junior analysts in requirements management techniques, skills and best practices
• Piloting a UML-based approach to requirements development, documentation and management
• Development of a business case and organization support for the Rational RequisitePro requirements management system as a means to increase requirements traceability, consistency and manageability
• Assistance with implementation, ongoing administration and configuration of Rational RequisitePro

Results

The insurer is now  successfully managing requirements definition for complex systems projects.  They have the tools, training and proven processes in place to complete projects on time and within budget.