Carphone Warehouse Case Study

1. Developing the COBAL Programme Solution Architecture.

The first challenge was in developing the COBAL Solution Architecture. The Architecture group within CPW had only been established in the previous year and so Onepoint brought their previous experience to CPW to define not only the overall architecture and the methods to apply them but also the templates for the System Architecture Document (SAD) and the NFR Document.

The architecture was based on a Service Orientated Architecture, which the enterprise was adopting. Being the first major programme to use this architecture the COBAL Architecture team had to drive the setup of a Service Governance framework working with the CPW Enterprise Integration Architect. This included the creation of a service registry.

2. Establishing an Architecture Governance Structure within the Programme

Prior to Onepoint’s involvement, the Architecture team was not being fully engaged within the programme. A key challenge was to establish an Architecture Governance Structure and to implement it such that Architecture became a key function within the programme.

The Governance Structure included establishing processes for how key decisions were made and agreed with relevant stakeholders. This was achieved through an Architecture Decision (AD) Paper that identified the problems to be addressed, the options available with an Architectural preferred recommendation. (This process has subsequently been adopted by CPW across other projects).

This involved two stages: Submission of the paper to the Technical Review Team who comprised of Subject Matter Experts from finance, business and technology and work-stream project managers. This ensured there was buy-in for the recommendation at a business / technical at the ground level;

On approval of this paper the second stage involved referring the paper to the Design Council comprising of Business Directors and Senior Management. The Architect would provide a walkthrough of the AD paper and address any questions. The Design Council would approve with instructions to implement once non-technical aspects such as cost, timescales and business impact were fully considered.

3. Education, Development and Management of CPW Enterprise Architects

Onepoint’s engagement aimed at making the CPW Architecture group self sufficient and self-reliant. As such, Shashin Shah was involved in educating, mentoring and developing CPW Enterprise Architects.

The team was managed using a typical project management methodology, complete with project plan, workload allocation & delivery targets based on the Architecture Governance Structure and Process (from AD draft paper submission through various reviews to completion and final approval) and regular team meetings.

4. Technology review

COBAL technology selection was performed prior to Onepoint’s engagement. On development of the architecture, however, it was found that some of the technology was not fit for purpose, specifically, around the Order Management and Provisioning component. Though a significant investment had already been made, Onepoint carried out a technology review with the CPW Enterprise Architecture team to propose moving that functionality to a different technology (TIBCO). This was agreed and successfully implemented.

Onepoint was actively involved in the selection (and removal) and governance of System Integration partners to ensure successfully delivery of the COBAL solution. Specifically Onepoint was involved in assessing and selecting Patni and TIBCO for delivering the CRM (Chordiant) and Order Management solution. As the COBAL programme went through the implementation lifecycle, Onepoint was involved in reviewing the delivery of the SI partners and providing architecture and design steer when needed.

In addition to defining the System Architecture for COBAL, Onepoint also led the work on gathering and assessing the Non-Functional Requirements for COBAL.

An approach to Performance Engineering with the focus on Performance Modeling was also defined though this could not be implemented due to time, resource and budgetary constraints.