Delivering the next generation of commodities trading software

The challenge

Hivedome is an unusual software company in that it is over 40 years old.  Their complex “heritage” software for commodities trading is used by many of the largest global commodities companies but needed re-engineering into a modern web services architecture.  The foundations had been laid but these needed to be built on to create a fully featured product for the next 10+ years.  

 

The software development team has been together for a long time.  They had good core development practices/culture but needed to improve pace while continuing to deliver quality and maintain the strong culture.

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The response

• Identified the “good” practices and culture that needed maintaining and areas for improvement.   

• Refreshed core delivery disciplines e.g. Definition of Ready and Done, release planning, backlog refinement, team charter and retrospection/review.   

• Established and tracked core metrics e.g. cycle time and throughput and used them to create/refine an estimation framework, roadmap and release plan. 

• Captured pilot customer user needs and co-ordinated acceptance testing/parallel running.   

• Mentored Product Manager in their role defining and prioritising features. 

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The outcome

• Delivered six major releases and many minor more ones 

• Built confidence in Hivedome’s ability to complete the transition, leading to refreshed commercial commitments from customers.   

• Implemented changes while minimising disruption   

• Improved throughput by ~20%  

• Secured pilot reference customer  

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