Cross cutting initiatives

Allianz Technology India had several teams trying to solve the same problems. All of us were facing similar problems with CI/CD and other tools. This is my pitch to form a team which takes care of this.

1. Cross Cutting Development Initiatives ID : WP121
2. What is cross cutting? • Involving multiple teams and departments • Similar problems faced across the organization
3. What is crosscutting? Development Team Prod Support Team Automation Testing Team Infra Support Team and much more…
4. The present scenario • Large number of solutions for each need • Each team chooses solutions based on – Previous Experience of Team Members – Legacy Systems already in use – Need and requirements
5. For instance • Defect/Issue tracking • Continuous Integration *All the tools mentioned above are used by different teams within ACIS/AMOS…
6. It‘s not just the wheel we are reinventing!
7. What is at Stake • Deployment of the tool in one of the project Servers • Maintenance of the tool (high if open source) • Initial Configuration and setup • No data backup and security Multiply this effort with number of teams and tools…
8. Case Study : Development Team A • Team Consists of – 3 senior developers – 2 junior developers – 2 business analysts – Project Manager • Team Resources – 2 dedicated servers(unix) – 1 database server
9. Case Study.. • Uses one the development servers available for deploying the following tools – Redmine (Issue Tracking) – Jenkins (Continuous Integration) – Gitlab (Repository)
10. Case Study.. Initial Setup • Technical members of the team are core developers. Minimal experience in server maintenance. • One or two of the senior developers take time to learn the set up and installs the tools. • All tools in a single server, server shows signs of memory and processing bottlenecks
11. Case Study.. Black Friday • During a peak weak of release, Redmine (issue tracking) shuts down • Testing team starts to complain they can‘t raise defects • The development team is busy with development • A 30 min fix for UNIX specialist, becomes a 2 day effort for a developer to get the system up.
12. Case Study.. Aftermath • All defects logged on last week is lost. – Most dev servers don‘t have data backup • 2 days effort is lost for a developer • Question on infrastructure stability from the Customer!
13. Why are we here? Because we have a solution..
14. Dedicated Team for.. • Maintaining common tools for projects in AMOS/ACIS • Identify and advice teams on tools to use • Ensuring continuity of business for AMOS/ACIS • Ensuring standards across projects in AMOS/ACIS
15. Advantages • Each team does what they are good at doing – Dev team can concentrate on building world class software – New dedicated team ensures the tools used in AMOS/ACIS works smooth and seamless • Ensure standards within Allianz – Easy for employees working in DEV team A to move to DEV team B. because the tools used are same…
16. Advantages • License costs as different teams share the tools and costs • Can be offered as a service to other Allianz entities.
17. More.. • What if Allianz cannot a find a tool it needs in the market. • What happens now? – A single team tweaks it‘s process to work with the tool available.
18. Going forward • Allianz technically strong enough to get what it needs. • Allianz can develop the tool which matches it‘s needs. • Driven by the new team and developed by developers and technical staff across Allianz. • Cross cutting solutions!
19. The Advantage • Strong developer community within Allianz • Allianz always has the option to ‘get what we want’ than relying on what others use • Creating and open source software will value ad to the Developer’s growth and will improve retention • Teams working together ease inter team movements.
20. Allianz as a Brand • Allianz banner in open source will increase the company brand
21. Examples • Yelp, the reviews and reccomendations engine, is the pioneer behind pre-commit, an industry favourite git hook. • Linkedin, the professional social media, is behing Apache Kafka, the distributed messaging system.
23. Together we can.. Transform Allianz to a digital Group!