Legal Services Commission

Legal Services Commission chose CDP for delivering the Documentation of the Corporate Information System Financial Modules and the resourcing of Oracle Developers for ongoing support and development projects at LSC.

Our aim was to ensure that the LSC maximised their investment in systems documentation, while minimising the costs of ongoing support. We viewed this as an opportunity to demonstrate our competencies and capabilities for partnering LSC in the support of their Oracle applications.

With our experiences in systems development and support, we were able to steer the project towards a cost-effective solution.

Challenge

Without an accurate count of Forms and Packages, and without a clear understanding of the distribution between basic, intermediate and complex processes, the software documentation job was a challenge. The system had 500 forms, 543 packages and 409 Functions and was not supplied with either a list of tables or any Entity Relationship (E-R) Models.

Quality Oracle Consultants - documentation team

CDP's staff are valued for their ability to understand the business context of their work as well as having ability to deliver code. These all-round qualities proved to be especially valuable in a documentation exercise.

Guide to producing cost-effective documentation

With a long history of providing ongoing maintenance and support for a number of customers, CDP had strong views on how to achieve a cost-effective solution to the documentation dilemma:

There should be a clear understanding of the purpose of the documentation

There should be no more documentation than is required to achieve that purpose

The documentation should be structured in such a fashion to ensure that it can be (cost) effectively maintained as systems move forward

At the detail level, developers will always put greater trust in the code than in the documentation

Summary comments on each module, with further detail where complex logic or a non intuitive process is used

Controls in place so that any changes to the above are reflected in the documentation

Experienced and productive staff specializing in Oracle developments formed part of the documentation team led by a principal consultant, with at least two additional consultants. Given the tight time scales and the relative complexities of some of the processes, a part time project manager completed the team.

For the first 2 weeks a principal consultant worked with LSC to finalise and agree the style and level of documentation to be provided, and then create a framework on which the team can build the documentation. This allowed for a more accurate estimate of the work, and for milestones and delivery dates to be agreed. The principal consultant led the entire documentation exercise.

A project manager was responsible for developing a project plan (using MS Project), participating in (and optionally running) the weekly review meetings, and ensuring that the project completed on time and within budget.

The documentation was done in a very thorough way and contained necessary detail that could be kept up to date as changes to the system are applied.

Table and column comments were updated on the database/Designer.

An E-R model was provided

Information about how forms and packages related to each other was documented as this overview was essential when new team members need to understand the system.

A module list, consisting of Forms, Packages and Functions was produced.

Cross references and Table maps were charted.

On-site Developers - Experiencing the CDP staff quality

Often it is necessary to have expert staff on-site who can relate directly to the user community, respond quickly to changing requirements, or just fill a manpower gap. To meet this need, CDP offered a selection of proven Oracle consultants, that were both technically and professionally capable, to satisfy LSC's requirements for ongoing maintenance, support and development on small projects within CIS. CDP developers worked on-site as part of the LSC team.

Technologies Implemented

Oracle 7.0

Oracle Forms 4.5

PL/SQL

Microsoft Project

Microsoft Office

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