2020 – 2021 · Montpellier, France · Hybrid
Technical architect (Helix 10) — telecoms
Astek — Leading French telecommunications and digital services provider
The contract renewal in 2019 widened the scope: the client handed the service centre a monitoring application that had until then been run in-house, along with a renovation study. The first extension of the account since its turnaround.
Study from March to July 2020: reading the specification, requirements matrix, needs-clarification workshops, sign-off on the requirements document, technical solution proposal, presentation, estimate, and — for the first time — writing the commercial proposal. The target: moving from Netrac 7 to Helix 10, this application's platform being a version behind the rest of the estate. Four hundred days were settled on for the service centre's share, the remainder going to the vendor.
The project launched in September 2020 for nine months, with a dedicated team of three developers. Delivery was held by that team; the role here was supporting it: bringing them up to speed on the vendor platform, acting as reference on blocking points, and serving as the project's entry point to the client's enterprise architect for provisioning and configuring the machines. Versions of the other two applications continued to be delivered in parallel.
Achievements
- 400 days estimated for the service centre's share
Study and estimate for moving from Netrac 7 to Helix 10
Five months of study: specification, requirements matrix, clarification workshops, sign-off on the requirements document, technical solution proposal, estimate and commercial proposal.
- 3 developers trained on the vendor platform
Bringing the delivery team up to speed
The dedicated team did not know the vendor platform. Training them, then assisting on blocking points, was done alongside version deliveries on the other two applications.
Target architecture of the renovation
New servers, a new version of the software package, correlation rules rewritten towards Drools, adaptation of the scripts wrapping the vendor's command-line calls, an active/passive failover environment. Designed during the study, delivered by the dedicated team.
Interface with the client's enterprise architecture
The project's entry point for provisioning and configuring the new machines.
Skills applied
- Business Objects (BO)
- Commercial content writing (offers, templates, tenders and RFPs)
- Drools
- Facilitating co-design workshops
- Fixed-price estimating
- Functional analysis and specification writing
- Helix
- Linux
- MQ Series
- Netrac
- One Automation
- Oracle
- Pre-sales and commercial pitch
- Technical team coaching