Deployment of The Complete Rational Tool Suite

Black Diamond Partners with IBM Global Business Systems

The Challenge

Within a very large CRM project at a top-ten insurance company, the entire Rational Suite needed to be deployed.  There was very little knowledge of Rational on a team that was large and geographically separated, including offshore locations. The implementation of Rational was concurrent with the CRM project schedule. The system development life cycle was under pressure and changing.

The Solution

Black Diamond was approached to support the project. Our company was asked to provide a staff augmentation resource for six months that knew all the tools in the suite. Instead, the core team re-used a project plan for Rational Suite deployment and integrated the plan with the CRM project plan. Once the plan was approved, different Black Diamond tool experts were supplied to implement tasks on the plan. All the tools were deployed within eight weeks.

The scope of the solution included:

• installing and configuring the complete IBM Rational Tool Suite
• defining processes and tools usage for each discipline
• defining tool integration requirements
• implementing tool integrations
• defining deployment model
• documenting tool usage models and deployment architecture
• estimation and scheduling of Rational Tools Deployment Project
• training tool users
• mentoring and otherwise supporting tool users during adoption period
• augmenting project teams with necessary skills to use tool successfully on CRM project

The Result

Black Diamond was able to coordinate and align multiple stakeholders and get the entire Rational Tool Suite deployed. This project was completed while overcoming significant hosting limitations. Client confidence in the entire CRM project was greatly improved.