Synopsis
TN partnered with a Defence department to redesign their current system, and apply Zero Dependency principles. The system was time-consuming, expensive and left the department reliant on its then-supplier to make even small changes.
Tecknuovo delivered a transformative iteration of the product, improving efficiency, reducing costs and giving the customer’s in-house teams greater control of the solution. Alongside delivery, Tecknuovo built a platform-centric Centre of Excellence to bring expertise and leadership around these types of solutions fully in-house.
The team helped the customer make the system’s user experience 43% more efficient, identified licensing optimisations that could save £2,755,008 per annum and significantly improved the system’s security against outside threats.
The Challenge
The incumbent supplier’s solution was creating compliance and user challenges in three key areas:
- The user journey completed by more than 4,000 key users was overly complicated and did not meet user or compliance needs.
- The existing solution needed improvements to meet security standards.
- The system relied heavily on suppliers to run and make changes, meaning the customer had to call in an external software engineer each time a small change was needed.
Solving Today
Mobilising an expert team
Combining expertise from Tecknuovo’s in-house teams and wider associate community, the team quickly mobilised the right specialists for the project. In just two weeks, Tecknuovo had the squad in place.
Reassessing the customer’s delivery strategy
Tecknuovo began by analysing the current system and identifying where its challenges stemmed from. Given the project’s scope and timeframe, the right approach was not to build a solution from scratch, but to iterate on the existing product in order to solve the challenges it was creating.
The team advised that a DevOps approach would be key to delivering efficiently within a challenging environment. Tecknuovo replaced traditional delivery methods with continuous integration and continuous delivery, helping to speed up and improve builds, integration and testing through automation.
The team also ensured the solution would be safe to iterate within the wider system by building in regression packs. The environment was complex and interconnected, meaning that changing one process could unintentionally affect another. Regression packs prevented this by testing not only the process being worked on, but also its effect on other processes down the line.
Streamlining user experience and maximising efficiencies
Tecknuovo built a new process that streamlined the core user journey in the system, driving efficiencies for more than 4,000 users.
The team rebuilt the core process to be logic tree-driven, meaning users were only asked relevant questions. This ensured the right outcome could be achieved more quickly and reduced the time taken to complete the questionnaire by 43%.
Tecknuovo also ensured that the department’s teams would be able to add or change qualifiers to the core journey as needed. The existing solution required developers to build new metadata to create these functions. Tecknuovo took a low/no-code approach instead, allowing non-technical in-house team members to make changes to the system independently.
Securing the system against outside threats
All public sector projects need to be built according to Secure by Design principles. Tecknuovo worked with the department to design and implement a governance process to ensure the system’s compliance with these principles was continuously evaluated and improved.
Security sat at the heart of development. It was not treated as an afterthought, but built into every requirement. Tecknuovo worked with the customer to implement best practice across the system, including role-based access control and continuous threat monitoring through penetration tests.
Applying Zero Dependency is one of Tecknuovo’s core missions, and this applies to security too. The team ensured that key security settings were editable and maintainable by the customer, reducing reliance on consultants to remain compliant.
Building Tomorrow
Reducing licensing costs
To help the department reduce spend, Tecknuovo investigated its use of software licences. The team found that many licences were not being used or configured optimally. Reducing, and in some cases eliminating, these costs could save Defence and the taxpayer an estimated £2,755,008 per year.
Upskilling to future-proof the department’s Centre of Excellence
The purpose of the project was to build a platform-specific Centre of Excellence within the department, giving it an internal source of expertise and leadership around future solutions.
A fundamental part of this was transferring all expertise and documentation around implementation work to the customer’s in-house teams. Tecknuovo used its Zero Dependency framework to deliver this.
The team built an extensive library of resources to help the customer establish the foundations of the Centre of Excellence and strengthen in-house capability. This included a knowledge repository, repeatable configuration standards and patterns, and documentation on the development rationale.
Crucially, Tecknuovo also trained the customer’s teams on how to use these resources, including creating video training materials for each release. The team also upskilled two team members as Product Owners, who will take over fully once Tecknuovo exits the engagement.
This technical capability was strengthened further by the low/no-code environment, which allows even non-technical team members to implement changes.
Results
Tecknuovo’s implementation helped the customer on four fronts:
- Enabled an estimated £2,755,008 annual saving on licensing.
- Made the solution 43% more efficient for users by streamlining the core user journey, saving an estimated 884 hours per year.
Added four new security features and improved standards to exceed Secure by Design principles.
