Customer Case Study Making Maintenace of Delta COBOL more efficient and sustainable

Global insurance company chooses Interactive Objects solution to modernize their legacy group-life IT-systems.
Project
Customer Financial Services - Insurance Application Global-life (Delta COBOL on mainframe). Project goals Sustainable improvement of maintenance process Risk minimization Cost Reduction Improvement of system stability

Solution
Interactive Objects MORE (Modular Reverse Engineering) Tool suite Reduction of complexity of the Delta COBOL Application Efficient, multi dimensional Impact Analysis through representation of the core features in an abstract model to allow for Monitoring of (off-shore) development and maintenance processes

Benefits
Significant reduction in operational costs by efficiency and quality improvement. Increased productivity, improved service and communication facilitated by efficient and flexible maintenance processes Significant risk reduction and elimination of know how bottlenecks due to accurate model based documentation Improved quality and accuracy of analysis.

iO Professional Services Centre of competence for Legacy modernisation, SOA, and System Engineering.

Starting point
The group-life system was developed in th the early 90 in Delta Cobol and is running on a mainframe. It consists of approx. 10 million lines of code. The main goal of the entire modernization project is the minimization of risk due to fading skill sets and the reduction of the high maintenance cost the system causes today.

The selection process for a competent partner was of high importance and driven by two decision criteria: short term value leverage for the other project streams, and incremental value delivery to maintenance tasks. The customer was looking for a solution, not a product.

by offering hints to potential entities, and processes. In order to provide a complete traceability and understanding of the system, the abstract model elements are linked to the graphical representations of the code as well as to the code itself. Navigation

Solution approach
Interactive Objects offers, as part of the Business IT Transformation approach, a solution for reverse engineering and incremental redocumentation, MoRE, which supports and optimizes the ongoing maintenance processes and helps to choose and define optimal migration strategies.
Analysis Abstraction Hints Provider

Project organisation
The modernization project is composed of several subprojects covering following areas: - Technology modernization to improve operating processes. - Re-engineering of problem modules, to minimize project and release cycles - Replacement of DMS modules with a COTS software package. - Efficiency and costs of perfective and corrective maintenance. This last area, efficiency and costs of maintenance, was defined as crucial, not only for the offered support to the other project streams, but because of its significance for future daily operations: a more efficient execution of maintenance tasks and a comprehensive understanding of structural and behavioural characteristics of the system. Only the result of a complete analysis on both, the fine- and coarse-grained level, allows for the identification and realization of the significant saving and optimization potential.

Technology

Legacy System Model

Domain Model

l e g a c y

r e d u c t i o n

a b s t r a c t i o n

We offer a flexible solution toolkit comprising methods and tools for maintaining and modernizing legacy applications at calculable and low risk. Together with the customer we use the part of our complete solution that allows for analysis and incremental redocumentation of the Delta Cobol application, and embedded two new transparent phases in the maintenance process: reduce and recover. The reduce phase reduces the complexity. The Delta Cobol code is parsed and dependencies of programs, statements and data tables are visualized. Less relevant details are ignored (not shown). The decision about relevance is configured on a project by project basis. Relevant elements are shown in graphical representations providing navigation facilities from all graphical elements to the source code and vice versa. In the recovery phase the results of the reduce phase are converted into more abstract models e.g UML models. This abstract level facilitates the discussion of business processes between business and IT department. New requirements can be discussed and integrated as well as existing processes can be re-engineered and optimized. The process of abstraction is additionally supported by the solution toolkit

along the different abstraction levels, system artefacts and technologies leverage more efficient searches and reliable dependency analysis. The abstract level builds the starting point for impact analysis for new requirements and enables the implementation of efficient and productive maintenance processes. It makes the entire system understandable to all involved stakeholders, from developers to business experts.

Multidimensional Analysis
Application developers already started using concepts like separation of concerns, frameworks, etc. A living example is manifested by this customer with two home-made frameworks to control the workflow of the business processes and the dialogs involved in these steps.

Customer Statement: during the Proof of Concept Interactive Objects (iO) clearly went the extra-mile to provide the most optimal coverage for our needs. This and iOs bullet-proof business case based on their processes and supporting tools have been crucial criteria for selecting iO. We are looking forward to the results of the next milestone and hope to extend the results within other departments.

In order to provide a complete understanding of the system, we extended the recovery features to handle these additional information sources. This enabled the customer to increase efficiency and quality of analysis and maintenance, as all three major elements (business process design, dialog design and code) became an integrated part of daily analysis and maintenance tasks. Additionally this extension helped to reduce the communication barrier between business and IT, as the knowledge

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about the system was made available to different stakeholders.

Role based perspectives/ views

Interactive Objects MoRE solution offers several views on the existing system, which are tailored to the needs of the different stakeholders involved in the maintenance and modernization process e.g.: project managers business analysts software architects software designers developers

side effects in case of extending or changing steps in the existing business processes. This reduces the risk, increases the quality, and decreases the testing effort/cost.

Lowered risk caused by fading skills due to well documented application using abstract models instead of just code. Improved quality due to complete analysis and graphical representation of dependencies on different levels of abstraction. Enabling re-use all levels.

Depend encies

Use Case High Level Activity

Low Level Activity

Abstract

Screen

Source

Cost reduction due to increased efficiency and high quality of deliverables. Avoiding potential cost driver caused by fading legacy technology and application skills. Supporting the definition of and decision for the adequate migration strategy.

The screen perspective for instance shows the user interfaces as they are known by the applications user. The navigability allows for the navigation from the screen to the corresponding code and vice versa. That feature eases the definition of change requests for the user and eases the realization of change requests for the developer. The navigability through the different perspectives helps to identify potential

Customer value
The customer value of this approach can be summarized as follows: Increased efficiency of the future maintenance process and change request realization. Less effort and better communication between user, business analysts and IT responsible.

Controlled Off-shoring: allows a clear and efficient definition of off shore development tasks and an integrated monitoring of quality, correctness and accuracy of deliverables.

Germany Interactive Objects Software GmbH Basler Strae 61 D 79100 Freiburg Germany Phone: +49 761 400 73-0 Fax: +49 761 400 73-73

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