Case Study - myFLIGHTDATA
Industry
Transport
Technologies
.net
Location
America
ABOUT
The client is a professional company that provides the flight monitor and record service for the pilot and airline company. This client has a whole set of system, which contains several subsystems, recording and managing the flight history for the pilot, as well as providing certificate and associated airline company information. However, this legacy system is very buggy and its performance was required to improve for the increasing clients’ needs. Meanwhile, it needs more extension on function and mobile part.
Challenge
Challenge we face- The technology applied for this legacy system is very old-fashioned that it cannot meet the increasing needs. Coding style is quite complicated, and this increased the manpower cost a lot. In addition, due to the bad extensibility of the system, it is hardly possible to add new features for the system;
- The industry gap of this professional system is very huge. This makes us very difficult to understand the requirement quickly and accurately;
- This is the first time that the client tried the outsourcing, so
- The client is not experienced on software outsourcing and project management. In the very beginning, the client did not listen to our feasible suggestion. The information we required for the system was always incomplete and client’s answers did not match our questions each by each;
- To clarify the requirement, we repeatedly made the appointment with client for instant communication via Skype thought it would be evening at our end, but the client did not show up for many times;
- The requirement was changeable and some of them were very urgent but the logic were not clear when they came in very sudden;
- We are not familiar with the useful terms and industrial standards for the flight industry. The wore is that for the description of issue and requirement, the client did not make it very clear, so it was quite difficult for us to understand the terms, jargon, standards, dialects and non-standard English writings in our correspondence. This was quite time-consuming so we often went back and forth many times for the final clarification.
Solution
Project Challenges- First fix the bugs in the system and clarify the chaotic logic. Meanwhile, we tailored a detailed and feasible upgrade plan for the system;
- By visiting plenty of professional flight forums and official websites and consulting many official files in authority, we were doing best to enrich our knowledge on flight industry, and actively confirm some critical part with client (the contact of the client is a pilot himself);
- With our abundant outsourcing experience, we guide the client to the better project management, following up for development progress and communication as below:
- In the beginning, we simplify the communication, by just Skype chatting to accelerate. I.e., we talked with client when it was our evening and his daytime (the client is located in US) Later, the client became very agreeable to work with us so he would like to communicate at his evening, when it is daytime at our end. This makes better working-efficiency for our developer, and the project quality is beneficial for this eventually;
- We insist on asking the priority of task list and updating the priority every week or milestone. And we always responded to the client about our schedule for the task list and kept the update for the prioritized tasks too.
- For the uncertain requirement, we confirmed with the client several times and if necessary, with some simple prototype (which can be done quickly), until we are in the same page for requirement understanding.
- We repeatedly emphasized the importance of consistency and coherence of communication. In the very beginning, our project manager and account manager got together to learn client’s requirement for moving forward quickly.
- Disclose the issue to the client whenever we found it. If client did not reply, we follow it up, with email, Skype and phone call, until got the reply.
Achievement
Achievement- The ability of the client’s project management has been largely improved, so the communication turned to be straight forward and accurate;
- The most direct result is that as the system got improved, the client gained more business opportunities and extended their business field;
- Up to now, our project manager is very familiar with the terms on flight industry and the client’s English style, which has been also standardized a lot by our repeatedly notice;
- In the development process, we provided much suggestion that expands client’s business and improves user experience to perfect system, so the client now is able to distract their energy from development, but focus on their business mainly.
