Client Overview
This client is a publicly traded, leading IT infrastructure and solution provider in Europe with revenues in excess of €700 million. They employ more than 600 people and do business in more than 20 countries worldwide.
Business Challenge
This leading high technology company is developing and maintaining applications in IBM Notes. The company recently adopted IT governance policies such as coding practices, version control and check-in/check-out, in hopes of improving the undisciplined and inefficient development process currently in place. Due to past practices, they still needed a way to efficiently compare different versions of database designs, design elements, document views and individual documents.
The client’s primary challenge was to find a way to compare backup versions of the application with their production version equivalents to see where design elements had been changed. Without this knowledge, they had no way to determine what changes in the production environment might have caused an application failure. They continued to struggle with identifying changes to existing templates, especially new mail templates.
Complicating their challenge was an impending upgrade from Notes 6.0 to 6.5. The client needed to identify template customizations and other changes made to determine the impact the upgrade would have on their applications. The current process was very manual, time consuming and prone to error.
The Teamstudio Solution
In looking for a way to help them manage their IT governance policies and to help them compare existing versions of code, they turned to Teamstudio. After meeting with Teamstudio, the client downloaded a copy of Delta from the website, installed it, and began using it immediately. They quickly discovered how easily they could identify template differences and changes. With this information,they could apply those same customizations to new templates, such as the mail template.
The client has found Teamstudio Delta to be especially invaluable when an application fails. They can immediately determine how the backup version is different from the production application and test to see if the application differences are related to the current issue. If not, they can quickly begin searching for other reasons the application failed. The client is particularly pleased with the ease of comparing two databases.
Results
Since adopting Teamstudio Delta, the client has reported a renewed, positive attitude among their Notes developers. All of the uncertainty in finding differences between databases, templates, and documents has been removed. The tedious, error-prone processes of the past have been replaced with a reliable and immediate method of determining application differences. Since the adoption of Delta, the client estimates they complete tasks requiring database, template and document comparisons in 25% less time, resulting in a great return on investment.