A start-up online payments business with a very profitable concept and working prototype software had recently partnered in a joint venture with a very large US payment processor. The start-up team needed to quickly enhance and extend the software to meet client needs, but there were no priority management or design processes in place to insure the development work was completed timely and according to client needs. There was no documentation of the functional capabilities of the system as it existed and it was becoming increasingly difficult to scale the operations, provide customer support and to modify the system.
The resources on the product were a combination of functional experts from the start-up, located in Miami and Buenos Aires, and IT and customer support people in Memphis. The sales team was aggressively courting some of the key industry players and needed the ability to add features and capabilities to the product to meet specific client needs. The start-up team members were not IT professionals and had no resources to create the missing processes and controls.
- The development work queue was defined and agreed upon by all stakeholders – and it became the measure of productivity for the development team.
- The improved QA process reduced client issues and provided feedback to the design and development teams.
- The more agile approach to development allowed quicker delivery of new features and client requests.
- The extensive functional documentation provided the framework for more rapid client adoption of the software, for internal training and improved customer support – and for ongoing functional and technical enhancements to the product.
- In addition, the team continued to function with the newly defined priority management and testing processes, preventing future backlogs and issues.
