“I believe Visual Studio 2012 is the most user-friendly and efficient IDE on the market. We leverage it to produce high-quality software within the context of even the most aggressive schedules.”

Ashley Vail, Director at IDC, Xerox

Xerox Corporation has 450 developers in India who work on projects for clients based predominantly in the United States. This geographic distance sometimes caused a communication gap between the developers and their clients. Xerox deployed Team Foundation Server 2012 to provide its developers and clients with a solution that could store all project-related information and communications. All stakeholders now have a clear view of the projects, improving efficiency and results.

Business NeedsXerox is a global leader in business process and information technology services. The India Development Center (IDC) of Xerox was established in 2002 and has approximately 450 IT professionals supporting software development, quality assurance, project management and operations support.

In August 2011, IDC deployed the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate development system and the enhanced Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 to replace its previousdevelopment environment, which was a mix of tools.

IDC liked the new integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft for all aspects of software development and application lifecycle management (ALM). With this solution, teams could store their project information in a unified repository and manage database development more efficiently. IDC achieved a 30 percent reduction in costs by retiring other development tools and also increased developer productivity by 40 percent by using the IDE.

While the solutions provided huge benefits for the IDC, it still wanted to improve the service it provided to its clients. “Because our developers are in India and most of our clients are in the United States, we still

had a communication gap between our developers and our client project owners,” explains Raman Padmanabhan, VP of Commercial Technology and Innovation, IDC, Xerox. “We were getting requirements and feedback through email. We also used Excel spreadsheets to report on the backlog but they were quickly outdated.” IDC wanted to provide complete visibility to stakeholders to help overcome the communication gaps.

SolutionIDC adopted pre-release versions of Visual Studio Ultimate 2012 and Team Foundation Server 2012 to enhance its processes and improve transparency with its clients.

Visual Studio 2012 has many enhancements that have helped Xerox improve productivity. All developers’ work items are grouped under the My Work feature in Team Explorer. Developers can use the Suspend and Resume feature to save the compete context of the current task that must be suspended. IDC uses the code metrics analyzer to find duplicates in the code to speed refactoring. It is also taking advantage of the improvements to the architecture analysis capabilities, which it uses to reverse engineer applications developed by the research organization.

Team Foundation Server 2012 has changed the way the development team

Company: Xerox CorporationWebsite: www.xerox.comCompany Size: 140,000 employeesCountry or Region: IndiaIndustry: Business Process Outsourcing

Company ProfileAs one of the world’s foremostenterprises for business processmanagement, Xerox operates in 160countries and applies its expertise andservices to help customers to operate more effectively.

Software and Services Microsoft Visual Studio− Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate

2012 − Microsoft Visual Studio Team

Foundation Server 2012

“Today the client can look at the dashboard and all of the reports within Team Foundation Server 2012. They get a complete view of each developer’s progress, what the backlog looks like, and the overall progress on the sprint.”

Raman Padmanabhan VP of Commercial Technology and

Innovation, IDC, Xerox

For more information about other Microsoft customer successes, please visit:www.microsoft.com/visualstudio

Solution Case Study

Technology Services Company Improves Project Visibility with ALM Solution

and clients communicate. The project owner now manages the backlog and item prioritization directly within Team Foundation Server. Requirements are attached to work items on the backlog, so stakeholders can easily access them during the application development process. Developers have access to the requirements when writing the code, testers can develop a better set of tests, and project managers can access the requirements when assessing feedback from the project owner. “Before, when people would claim we hadn’t followed the requirements, we often didn’t have a good way to respond. Now the requirements are all in Team Foundation Server and I can look at the details of the product backlog item and find the discrepancy,” says Padmanabhan.When project owners want to check a project status, they no longer have to depend on a spreadsheet. “Today clients can look at the dashboard and all of the reports within Team Foundation Server 2012. They get a complete view of each developer’s progress, what the backlog looks like, and the overall progress on the sprint,” says Padmanabhan. The project owner can provide live feedback during each sprint demonstration and this feedback is captured in Team Foundation Server.

IDC is using Systems Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 to manage its lab environment. “We have a sandbox environment for our development and test community in India,” says Kiran Kumar, Program Manager at IDC, Xerox. “As soon as the build is released, our testers can do everything they need to in that one environment including automation, load, and regression testing. The integration is at a whole different level.”

BenefitsVisual Studio 2012 and Team Foundation Server 2012 have helped IDC to improve customer service resulting in significant business growth. “With this solution I can provide more value to my clients with the same amount of investment from my team,” says Padmanabhan.

Fully Integrated ALM SolutionIDC believes the most important improvement is that all of the project information is now stored in one place and no longer tied up in spreadsheets or emails where it can be overlooked. “Because everything is now in one place, our developers and testers save a lot of time

looking for requirements or feedback,” notes Nandeesh Munireddy, Systems Development Manager at IDC, Xerox.

With the unified location for project information, project managers have a clear

view of the project. “Now I can go to portal and see the status of builds, the backlog, and the burndown chart,” says Krishna Kumar, Program Manager at IDC, Xerox. “Because I can see everything in one glance, I know exactly where the bottleneck is and how to fix the problem to bring the project back on track.”

Team Foundation Server provides the same clear view of the project to IDC’s clients. “With Team Foundation Server 2012 we can give our customers much greater transparency into our development processes. We use that transparency to get better feedback, which results in better solutions,” says Padmanabhan.

Improving the LabUsing Systems Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 and Lab Manager to manage its lab environment, Xerox also has a more productive development environment. “Lab Manager and Test Manager enable us to drive automation in the lab. We are already reaping the benefits of this partnership with improved quality and faster turnarounds for clients,” says Prasad Thiruneelakandan, Infrastructure Manager at IDC, Xerox.

A Better IDEThe multitude of changes to Visual Studio 2012 that help make the developers’ jobs easier are paying dividend for IDC. By speeding code development, “Visual Studio is saving time and development effort across IDC, which translates into a substantial dollar savings,” says Ashley Vail, Director at IDC, Xerox. “I believe Visual Studio 2012 is the most user-friendly and efficient IDE on the market. We leverage it to produce high-quality software within the context of even the most aggressive schedules.”

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published September 2012