Save Project Costs: Organize System Documentation using IB-ARM

A major Canadian bank identifies the state of its business systems documentation as a significant contributor to cost overruns. The original documentation is now almost two decades old. Over the years, changes to the documentation have been piled on; ‘changes to the changes’ have created a web of documentation that resides in paper format, DCF, WordPerfect and Word. To design new system features, each project must dig through this information and only a few ‘work-magnets’ know how to even start. As a result, the analysis phase of each project is a long, costly exercise and issues that are missed must be dealt with in the QA and Testing phases.

The bank hires a summer student to look at its documentation. She spends four months just to find and index the documentation relevant to only one of the 299 workflows that this business unit uses. Hands are in the air – to identify and organize the documentation of all 299 workflows would require 100 person-years to do! And, as soon as the first one is done, it would be outdated as changes constantly occur.

We deliver a proof of concept to show how IB-ARM technology can help out. In four weeks, we collect, organize and hyperlink 32 of the workflows. Simultaneously, the bank creates a benchmark to show that using the IB-ARM repository for its documents would save a conservatively estimated 17% of project costs! This is obviously a huge number and defines an ROI of less than four months!

In four months, we implement all remaining workflows and hook the IB-ARM repository into Microsoft SharePoint™ Portal to increase the value of both investments. We also define and implement the automatic refresh of the repository, keeping documents organized and current dynamically. Delivering more with less becomes reality.