Overview
Country or Region:India
Industry:IT Services
Customer Profile
Founded in 1998, UST Global Inc is an IT services firm, which delivers market-defining solutions to ‘Global 1000' companies. Based in Aliso Viejo, California, UST Global employs over9,000 employees.
Business Situation
UST Global has accumulated multiple tools to manage software development. The separate silos of information have,however, resulted in lost productivity, lack of visibility into project status, and decreased collaboration across project teams.
Solution
It implemented a solution based on Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 with Team Explorer Everywhere.
Benefits
Boostsproductivity by around 20percent
Increases visibility to all stakeholders
Improves knowledge management with integrated workspace
Improves change control and optimizes code management
Increases speed with improved collaboration / / “Increased developer productivity across diverse technology platforms was a key goal for us. Better and quicker access to more information of the entire product lifecycle development, has not only increased our efficiency but also productivity by around20 percent.”
Murali Gopalan, CIO, UST Global Inc.
UST Global Inc, a leading provider of end-to-end IT services, wanted to create greater efficiency inits development and lifecycle processes. The company needed a platform that could facilitate various aspects of the software development lifecycle, improve project management, and gain application lifecycle management (ALM) competencies and offer it to its customer. To gain these capabilities, it standardized ALMon Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010. By using theirinherent capabilities, UST Global has increased productivity by around 20 percent, while also improving team collaboration and enhancing constant flow of value. The integrated solution, streamlines all aspects of ALM for both Java and Microsoft .NET. It also expands the platform’s overall project management capability by providing real time information to stakeholders.
Situation
UST Global is a leading provider of end-to-end IT services and solutions for Global 1000 companies. The company specializes in multiple industries including healthcare, retail and consumer goods, banking and financial services, entertainment, insurance, transportation and logistics, and utilities.The industry-leading expertise found in the company’s Centers of Excellence (CoEs) plays a key role in its success with clients by delivering pragmatic IT solutions. Founded in 1998, the company is based in Aliso Viejo, California. With a strength of over 9,000 employees, UST Global fosters client-specific cutting-edge innovations from its state-of-the-art centers in the United States, United Kingdom, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore..
Until recently, the company had a disintegrated development environment, consisting of technologies from Microsoft and others. A mix of stand-alone tools was used for various aspects of application lifecycle management. Employees used Microsoft Visual SourceSafe for source code management and Team Foundation Server 2008 to manage software development for internal and external projects. In addition, Apache SVN was used for all version control requirements of projects on other technologies, and,Bugzilla was used as the defect tracking and management tool for non-Microsoft projects.
Project managers, software engineers, account managers, and other technical professionals lacked integrated tools that could provide quick and detailed insight into projects. “We were unable to generate project status in real time,” says Manjith Sundaresan, Project Portfolio Manager, UST Global. “Gathering information from separate silos such as emails, project reports, documents, and artifacts, was a time-consuming, complex, and challenging task.”
Project management was also inefficient, and teams lacked critical information that could accelerate the resolution of software issues. As project sites created in SharePoint 2007, were used only as a repository, the lack of visibility was not only turning out to be frustrating, it was also hampering employee productivity.
UST Global wanted a way to optimize its operations and improve data transparency. The company sought a centralized set of development tools that could simplify lifecycle management, facilitate communication and collaboration, and boost productivity.The objective of replacing the infrastructure was to have a futuristic solution that would give the company a competitive advantage in the market.
Solution
As a Microsoft Gold Business Partner, UST Global had been making significant useof Microsoft technologies. Intrigued by the platform that was now being offered, it decided to build its new solution on the same. The company implemented Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate development system along with the Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010. “We believed that the integration and centralization of everything in one environment would be a big productivity boost,” says Rinosh Jacob Kurian, Enterprise Architect,UST Global. “Plus, we also wanted to take advantage of the new architecture testing, and tracking features. Altogether, it made a compelling all-in-one solution.”
While almost all capabilities were available via out-of-the-box features, UST Global took 14 use cases to custom build specific modules to meet its requirements. These were part of the company’s goal to leverage maximum value from the products. It alsobecame the key differentiator in its delivery strategy.
UST Global turned to Microsoft for help with the development of these modules, as it wanted product and platform deployment insight. SiddharthMalik, Senior Director - Developer Tools Business of Microsoft India, saw the merit and vision in UST’s strategy. He then assigned KiranBajilepalli, Ace Platform Technology Strategist, to help with business case assessment, solution architecture, and design execution. Kiran was able to help the company adapt quickly and easily, delivering end-to-end visibility into the heterogeneous IT lifecycle management.
The company also took advantage of Microsoft’s SEED(Strategically Engage, Enhance, and Deploy) initiative.Powered with project information and statistics, it was able to improve organization agility and achieve better cross-functional synchronization.
The custom development was completed and moved into production over three iterations. These integrations and feature enhancements ensured that some of the key benefits were realized.
UST Global has integrated its IBM Rational products like IBM Rational Application Developer, IBM Rational Software Architect, IBM Rational Functional Tester, and IBM Rational Performance Tester,using Visual Studio Team Explorer Everywhere 2010 Eclipse plug-in. This allows the team to use a single environment for Java and .NET based solutions.
The company is also using Microsoft Project Server 2010 to standardize project management across multiple teams. It saves time for employees through automated processes and provides clarity on project status. The transparency achieved aids collaboration between project managers and developers.
The change management required for ensuring that all stakeholders use all features was challenging for UST Global.Microsoft provided on-the-job training to some of the team members who were identified as evangelists for the solution. This was a very effective move, as these members were able to actually use the various capabilities of the solution and become comfortable with it.
As of today, UST Global has rolled out the new solution to only a few departments to collect feedback and measure effectiveness (both qualitatively and quantitatively) before it is rolled out across the organization. This iteration will also allow the company to fine-tune and improve areas based on end user feedback and analysis of relevant metrics. The Information Services team, a part of the office of the CIO, is currently leveraging the solution for internal development for UST Global.
Rinosh Jacob Kuriansays, “With the new comprehensive integrated solution we have optimizedour development processes. The platform not only enables a high degree of collaboration within the team, but also helps to analyze data and trends, which is absolutely critical to our business.”
Benefits
UST Global expects its standardization on Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 for application lifecycle management to benefit the company in several ways. The solution has streamlined development, improved productivity, and increased team collaboration. The new tools enable employees to have deep visibility into the entire application lifecycle.
Boosts Productivity byAround20 Percent
UST Global has a comprehensive platform that helps to efficiently develop and maintain projects across multiple locations. The company is experiencing productivity gains by eliminating the need for entering data in multiple locations and empowering team members to contribute to the planning and monitoring processes. Integration ofMicrosoft Project Server 2010 with Team Foundation Server 2010 ensures that project managers can create a project plan in Microsoft Project Professional 2010 and publish it in the Project Server. As the team members, business analysts, developers and testers complete their assigned tasks and enter their activities, the project plan gets updated in the Project Server.
Earlier, for example, the project manager had to collect the status of progress from each developer at the end of the week and update the project plan to show the overall progress against the baseline. It also required the developers to fill out detailed status reports to project managers manually. This was prone to human error and usually conveyed an incorrect status. Today, data is collected in real time as developers work.
Murali Gopalan, CIO, UST Global says, “Increased developer productivity across diverse technology platforms was a key goal for us. Better and quicker access to more information of the entire product lifecycle development, has not only increased our efficiency but also productivity by around 20 percent.”
Increases Visibility to All Stakeholders
Since the project status is published in the project site that is automatically created in the Project Server for each project, any stakeholder can visit the site to understand the status of the project and the progress of dependent tasks. For example, a tester would know the progress on the artifact that the developer has to release to QA (Quality Assurance). With this integration, the status and other details captured in Team Foundation Serveris reflected in the Project Server, showing the updated status at any given point in time.
Improves Knowledge Management with Integrated Workspace
The collaboration environment in the Project Server and Team Foundation Server site in SharePoint provides a container for all project related artifacts that are part of the project. For example, it captures who inclient contacts can provide clarifications in the project site. This is available to all team members. The project site is used as a central location for all non-engineering artifactsincluding project management plan components such as risk, quality, and cost along with communication management plans, and details about the target environment, and ecosystem where the new application will be deployed.
Engineering metrics are available in the SharePoint site that is created automatically by Team Foundation Server. This site gives metrics on volume of work completed and pending, and defects reported and fixed.
ImprovesChange Control and Optimizes Code Management
All, Java, .NET, and SQL Server artifacts are in a central location. This has significantly helped UST Global. Now, any member (business analysts, developer, architect, tester, QA) of any development team can take the requirements from the same tool from his or her IDE and report status. “With multiple disconnected, disparate tools, we would often get delayed due tothe number of manual test points,and therefore, that would deliver unsatisfactory results,” says Rinosh Jacob Kurian. “Managing everything inside a central repository saves time and results in a high-quality product. We now have a platform that operates as a single unit.”
IncreasesSpeed with Improved Collaboration
UST Global has improved collaboration by connecting all team members with a centralized, shared repository for project data. The improved collaboration has in turn contributed significantly to the speed of delivery. “Project status is now reflected as soon as the upstream activity is completed in the SDLC,” says Manjith Sundaresan. “Resources can immediately pick up the next task and start working on it. This helps resources located in different offices to work together in a virtual office.”
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 is an integrated development system that helps simplify the entire development process from design to deployment. Unleash your creativity with powerful prototyping, modeling, and design tools that help you bring your vision to life. Work within a personalized environment that helps accelerate the coding process and supports the use of your existing skills, and target a growing number of platforms, including Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and cloud services. Also, work more efficiently thanks to integrated testing and debugging tools that you can use to find and fix bugs quickly and easily to help ensure high-quality solutions.
For more information about Visual Studio 2010, go to