Project Team Boosts Productivity by 15 to 20 Percent While Achieving CMMI Compliance

OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Healthcare

Customer ProfileFEi Systems provides data management solutions for behavioral health, clinical trials, and other areas of healthcare. The company has 150 employees and is based in Columbia, Maryland.

Business SituationIn late 2010, to facilitate more structured and manageable growth and improve the maturity of its processes, FEI Systems decided to pursue CMMI Level 3 compliance companywide.

SolutionThe team met most of the requirements for CMMI with its existing Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 implementation, and adopted TeamCompanion from Ekobit—an add-in for Microsoft Outlook—to easily capture email threads in Team Foundation Server.

Benefits Boosted productivity by 15 to 20

percent Improved visibility into project status Complete, end-to-end traceability Increased capacity to support business

growth

“By using Team Foundation Server and TeamCompanion to optimize how we work, I’d estimate that we’ve made the team as a whole 15 to 20 percent more productive.”

Sarah Moore, Development Manager, FEi Systems

Already working at capacity, the Web Infrastructure for Treatment Services (WITS) project team at FEi Systems had to meet the stringent requirements for Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) certification with few, if any, additional resources. The team achieved this by optimizing its use of Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010, and adopting TeamCompanion from Ekobit to access Team Foundation Server 2010 from Microsoft Outlook 2010—including the ability to easily capture email threads in its project repository. This helped the WITS team to achieve CMMI certification with minimal effort and disruption. Moreover, the team’s efforts over the past 18 months have also delivered a 15 to 20 percent increase in productivity, improved visibility into project status, end-to-end traceability, and the capacity to support additional business growth with existing resources.

SituationFounded in 1999, FEi Systems provides healthcare data management solutions for government and other public-sector agencies. Web Infrastructure for Treatment Services (WITS), the company’s flagship offering, is a web-based electronic health record system for the planning, administration, and monitoring of behavioral health and substance abuse treatment programs.

The WITS team consists of 13 developers, 4 business analysts, 4 account managers, 5 test and production support personnel, 2 project managers, and 5 process quality assurance personnel—33 people who must work closely together to keep everything running smoothly while supporting 31 customized implementations from a single, common code base. In the past, the team used Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 to meet its application lifecycle management (ALM) needs, including source code control, work items, testing, defect tracking, report-ing, and team workflows. In late 2010, to facilitate more structured and manageable growth and improve the maturity of its processes, FEI Systems decided to pursue Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Level 3 compliance companywide.

For WITS development manager Sarah Moore, whose team was already working at capacity, that meant finding a way to satisfy the stringent documentation, reporting, and process-related requirements for CMMI certification with few, if any, additional resources. This included finding a painless way to capture email conversations conducted in the Microsoft

Outlook 2010 messaging and collaboration client and link them to work items in Team Foundation Server.“Communication with customers on project requirements—and communications among team members on how to implement them—is most often done via email,” says Moore. “To meet CMMI documentation requirements for capturing this information without being slowed down, we needed an easy way to get those emails into Team Foundation Server.”

SolutionThe company’s strategy for achieving CMMI Level 3 compliance was to build on and improve existing, already familiar processes to the greatest extent possible, and to minimize the additional time and effort that would be required. The WITS team met most of the additional require-ments for CMMI certification by modifying its existing Team Foundation Server process templates. To integrate email into its Team Foundation Server environment, the company chose TeamCompanion from Ekobit, a Microsoft Partner Network member with a Gold competency in application lifecycle management. “We went online to see what others were doing, and didn’t find anything that competed with TeamCompanion,” says Moore. “After a brief evaluation, we purchased a license for every team member.”

With TeamCompanion, which runs as an add-in to Microsoft Outlook 2010, all WITS team members can easily access Team Foundation Server from within Outlook. “TeamCompanion enables this by adding a TeamCompanion node to the Outlook navigation pane, augmenting existing ribbon tabs in Outlook with new context-

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“We went online to see what others were doing, and didn’t find anything that competed with TeamCompanion.”

Sarah Moore, Development Manager, FEi Systems

sensitive actions, and adding new tabs for creating and querying work items, planning and prioritizing, and documentation and reports,” explains Vedran Brnicevic, Sales Manager at Ekobit. “Work items can be viewed in the Outlook preview pane or in a separate window, and work item query results, reports, and document lists are shown in the central Outlook pane. Users can also add shortcuts to frequently accessed items in the Outlook Favorites menu.”

Although TeamCompanion gives WITS team members a number of ways to access Team Foundation Server from within Outlook, creating new work items from email messages and attaching email messages to existing work items are the two used most commonly. Figure 1 illustrates how WITS team members can create a new work item from an email message by clicking the New Work Item on the TeamCompanion ribbon tab, or by right-clicking on a message and selecting from the context-sensitive menu.

Even developers who work in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional throughout most of the day have found it easy to use TeamCompanion when they need to capture an email message as documentation. “TeamCompanion makes it so easy to capture email messages in Team Foundation Server that, in the beginning, multiple people were attaching copies of the same thread,” recalls Moore. “To eliminate duplication, we implemented a policy that whoever started a thread is responsible for attaching that thread when it’s concluded.”

TeamCompanion is proving useful in many other ways, too, such as for looking up work items or running queries against Team Foundation Server. “When someone walks into my office with a question, I can look up the work item without leaving Outlook—a program I always have open,” says Moore.

Team members can also easily run reports using TeamCompanion, and can take advantage of its One Click Reports feature to save report parameters (such as Area or Iteration) for frequently run reports. “Regardless of each team member’s role, TeamCompanion helps them more quickly and easily do their jobs,” says Moore. “We haven’t been slowed down in meeting the documentation requirements for CMMI certification, and have been able to continue using Team Foundation Server as our formal repository for all things project-related.”

The team’s journey to CMMI Level 3 compliance—achieved in December 2011—has also led it to make greater use of built-in Team Foundation Server features that

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Figure 1. TeamCompanion makes it easy to create new Team Foundation Server work items from within Microsoft Outlook, or to attach email messages to existing work items.

support the CMMI model, especially reporting. “CMMI is all about process improvement, as a means of optimizing organizational performance,” says Moore. “As we’ve adapted our use of Team Foundation Server to achieve CMMI compliance, we’ve come to appreciate the many ways it can help us measure our processes and make sure they remain aligned with customer needs and business goals.”BenefitsWith Team Foundation Server and TeamCompanion, FEi Systems is meeting the requirements for CMMI Level 3 certification with minimal effort and disruption. The work the WITS team has done to optimize its application lifecycle management environment has also led to a significant increase in productivity, improved visibility into project status, end-to-end traceability, and the capacity to support additional business growth with existing resources. Increased ProductivityFor the WITS team, the tools and information needed to maximize productivity are now always at hand, enabling all team members to avoid wasting precious time. “We’ve been able to wring every ounce of unproductive effort out of how we work,” says Moore. “We’re not spending one more minute than necessary creating documentation, coordinating efforts, or tracking progress, and we rarely need to schedule a meeting to discuss a work item. By using Team Foundation Server and TeamCompanion to optimize how we work, I’d estimate that we’ve made the team as a whole 15 to 20 percent more productive.”

Adds Brnicevic, “Team Foundation Server is designed to give all members of a project team the information they need to stay productive, work together, and maximize team output. We designed TeamCompanion with the same goals—to help all project team members get more done in less time by enabling them to access Team Foundation Server through the same application they’re likely to have open and be working in throughout the day: Microsoft Outlook.”

Improved Visibility into Project StatusEven with monthly major releases and additional maintenance and feature releases in-between, Moore always has full visibility into project status. “With Team Foundation Server, I always have an accurate picture of the work that’s done and what remains,” says Moore. “For example, I can tell you that our January 2012 release included 157 work items, required 1,500 hours of development, and addressed the needs of 17 customers. Similarly, I can tell you that we’re now 40 percent finished with our March 2012 release, and that we’re slightly ahead of schedule based on work item status. We even use Team Foundation Server to track customer deployments, enabling us to know exactly when each is due, who did the work, and how long it took.”

Powerful reporting capabilities also help Moore know where to focus to optimize team output. “I can monitor the productivity of each team member and compare it to the team average,” she says. “I can also monitor the frequency of coding errors, how accurately we’re testing things, and the quality of requirements. Team Foundation Server gives me everything I

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“Team Foundation Server gives me everything I need to locate any issues or bottlenecks, so that I can then address them with training, reminders, process changes, or whatever else it takes.”

Sarah Moore, Development Manager,FEi Systems

need to locate any issues or bottlenecks, so that I can then address them with training, reminders, process changes, or whatever else it takes. When we started working toward CMMI compliance, we didn’t measure many of these things—it just wasn’t a priority. We may have had a general sense of how we were doing in various areas in the past, but now we know exactly.”

Complete, End-to-End TraceabilityComplete, end-to-end traceability from requirements to work products—another tenet of CMMI certification—is also immediately available. “Our application has a support ticket submission form built into it, which generates a Team Foundation Server work item automatically,” explains Moore. “Whether a trouble ticket comes in through that form or via email, we always have full traceability—including who initially raised the issue, who it traveled through, who coded the change, and when it was checked-in and tested. We even track charge amounts for each release in Team Foundation Server, so that we know what they’re worth in terms of revenue.”

Increased Capacity to Support Business GrowthDue to its efforts over the past 18 months, the WITS team is now poised to support

additional work with existing resources. “Our workload has increased by 15 percent over the past year while our team size has increased by two people, or about six percent, and we still have the capacity to take on additional work,” says Moore. “Not only have we avoided being slowed down by CMMI certification requirements, but we’ve improved our ability to support future business growth.”

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010Microsoft 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:www.msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about TeamCompanion from Ekobit, visit the website at:www.teamcompanion.com

For more information about FEi Systems, visit the website at:www.feisystems.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Software and Services Microsoft Visual Studio− Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

Professional− Microsoft Visual Studio Team

Foundation Server 2010 Microsoft Office− Microsoft Outlook 2010

Third-Party Software TeamCompanion (from Ekobit)

Partner Ekobit