The IT department at insurance company Aon is using a
technique called business technology optimisation to assess whether
in-house developed applications are ready to roll
out.
Business technology optimisation correlates the rate of errors in a
software development project with the length of time required to
build the application. Software that ships without adequate testing
may suffer from poor performance if it is rolled out to too many
users too quickly, or may crash more frequently.
Aon is using software from Mercury Interactive, which supports
business technology optimisation, to determine whether an
application is ready to install across the organisation. The tools
are designed to give IT chiefs a way to convey to the business the
risk of rolling out software early.
Adrian Dabell, chief architect and corporate programmes director at
Aon, said the tools were being used to apply corporate governance
to the software development process. "We can make a judgement on
shipping and the ramifications of the application not being quite
right," he said.
The software tools allowed Dabell to assess the risk of deploying
software early, or to a subset of users, owing to pressure from the
business. "If we deploy an application now which has 80%
functionality but contains bugs, we can decide how to move
forward," he said.
Through the governance process Dabell was able to focus on
achieving specific goals for the application. "We can set a goal of
a one second access time with 100 users [on the system] then assess
the impact of adding 300 users," he said.
Dabell used the software in a project to roll out a new application
to 400 users across eight sites. Phase one originally involved
fewer than 50 users, but the business wanted more.
Dabell said the tools provided him with a way to tell the business
how performance would degrade if the number of users was increased
straight away. Using the metrics provided by Mercury Interactive,
Dabell was able to convince business managers to meet him halfway
on the number of users.
Bola Rotiba, senior analyst at Ovum, said Aon's business technology
optimisation strategy was a sensible one. The tools gave IT
managers a way to ascertain key functionality in an application to
be tested. She said, "Aon's IT managers can express priorities in
terms the business can understand."