terranova trading

IS-556 Project Management DePaul University Mr. Fisher, Instructor Spring Quarter, 2004 Terra Nova Trading Report of Findings Prepared By: Anup Bhattarai Tom Niedzielak Jeremy Bird Vipapak Limprana Thomas Pinkowski June 10, 2004 -Confidential and Proprietary - Terra Nova Trading Report of Findings and Recommendations Table of Contents Table of Contents..................................................................................1 Terra Nova Trading Background .........................................................2 Company Background ............................................................2 About Terra Nova Trading Today ..........................................3 Existing System ......................................................................3 Project Overview ...................................................................................4 Goals of new Application ........................................................4 Project Deliverables ................................................................5 Why new system?.................................................................................6 Problems of the Prior System ................................................6 Purpose of the New System Project ......................................6 Benefits of the New System ...................................................7 The New System Architecture ...............................................7 The New System Layout-Work in Progress ..........................8 Project Plan and Timeline ....................................................................8 Requirements ..........................................................................8 Project Planning ......................................................................9 Project Controls.....................................................................10 Project Issues ......................................................................................10 Suggestions for Terra Nova ...............................................................12 Page 1 . . . . Terra Nova Trading . Terra Nova Trading.Background . . Company Background . Report of Findings and Recommendations Terra Nova Trading began in 1994. The firm provided specialty order clearance to institutional brokers. It also offered service which involved breaking up large orders into smaller ones and therefore spreading the risk. In 1996 Terra Nova shifted its focus to providing trade clearance and data infrastructures for many leading firms. The firm quickly established a reputation for delivering data in a more user-friendly and efficient manner; introducing such innovations as point-and-click order placement. With the late 1990‟s popularity of broadband online access, Terra Nova was able to provide these services directly to its trading clients via the Internet. Terra Nova Online, a division of Terra Nova Trading, was founded to create trading products and services for this clientele, embracing the B-to-C market for the first time in the firm‟s history. With .com boom Terra Nova grew even faster than ever before. In 2000 Terra Nova was one of the first Broker/Dealers to offer access to options execution. This provided additional service for customers that wanted to take higher risks and possibly make more money. This was a big step toward growing the business and customer base. The real test came when „.com‟ revolution ended a lot of companies. Terra Nova had to struggle to stay in business because market volume was much lower and customers simply stopped trading. Terra nova was able to get through those couple of slower years and even grow its customer share by acquiring some of the struggling companies. Terra Nova stayed in business by keeping existing customers and making all aspects of the business more efficient and cost effective. Terra Nova also looked for sources of income in other areas and started offering additional services. One of those services was trading classes. In 2001 Terra Nova affiliated itself with MarketWise Trading School. The goal was that smart traders would be able to recognize market trends in tougher environment and take advantage of those trends. This was important after market slow down because people had to know what they were doing to make money. This provided their customers with knowledge and on day trading and trading what meant more active traders and bigger profits. Terra nova was able to accomplish all that by aligning itself with strategic partners. Through its strategic alliance with one of the industry‟s premier trading software development companies, Townsend Analytics, Ltd., Terra Nova has been able to offer effective trading technologies and services featuring reliable quote information and a seamless order routing interface to Electronic Communications Networks and the NASDAQ® system. Townsend Analytics developed an Internet-based application called Realtick, which gave Terra Nova clients the freedom to trade from home. Currently Terra Nova offers couple of different version of Realtick depending on customer needs. For novice and light trader they have browser based version which was the first platform of its kind on the market. This is very low cost and easy to use compare to full version of this product which is offered to people who trade more actively they use Realtick as a stand alone application. This application has a possibility of adding services to it like news feeds, additional data feeds, trade alerts and exchanges. All extra features cost more and customers can add them or remove them from month to month. Terra Nova has been featured in many comparisons in different trading magazines and they always came in on top or near the top overall. One of the services provided by Terra Nova that is always on top is terra nova reporting system. Terra nova provides very wide range of reports and analytical Page 2 . . . . Terra Nova Trading Report of Findings and Recommendations . tools that can satisfy even the pickiest trader. They keep creating new reports every year pushing the . level of satisfaction higher and higher. . Another service that Terra Nova provides is online account funding system that allows new and . existing customers to transfer money over from their checking account to their trading account. This . service is simple to use and free of charge so customers use it a lot. This may seam like not a big factor but when it comes to stock markets time is money and if customers can quickly and easily transfer money over to their accounts it improves customer satisfaction. Because of all these existing relationships, management decided to develop a new online application system. This would replace existing system that had many short-comings. It would also add functionality that would tie Terra Nova online application with online Realtick application. The new system would also have better integration with existing CRM systems and cut the number of steps needed to open an account. About Terra Nova Trading Today Today traders demand from their service provider a higher level of support and service than ever before. Competition between trading companies is at a very high level and if one company is not providing fast and good service people can go somewhere else. “Electronic age” is helping fuel this. One of the most used services is electronic document transfer. A lot of document has to be transferred electronically; most paperwork these days can be done online or over the phone. With all this in mind Terra Nova trading management decided to develop its biggest in-house project to date; development and implementation of online signup system for new accounts. Existing System Old system was outsourced and maintaining it become very costly and time consuming. With some regulation changes and additional products in the offering, Terra nova management decided that instead of going to the consulting company they would give this project to in-house developers and control closely the development process all the way through. Another problem that affected management decision was that existing application was developed using Cold Fusion technology. This meant that whoever was working on the system had to have understanding of this system. Because of the technology used this application had to run on Cold Fusion server which sits on top of Microsoft IIS. With plans to move to clustered web server environment Terra Nova would have to purchase additional licensing for the cluster and that meant higher maintenance cost. Page 3 . . . . Terra Nova Trading Report of Findings and Recommendations . With all the problems that Microsoft Windows faces today having additional server running Cold . Fusion meant one more system to check and update. All the administration and maintenance that . have to be done by IT and developers and when problems occurred they had to work on a system . that was supporting only one but important application. Because new system would run under . Microsoft technology that comes with their server package no additional servers would be required so Cold Fusion servers can be removed from IT list of systems to maintain and update. This also means that with move of the new system to cluster environment some of the maintenance functions that developers were performing before will be transferred to cluster administrators. So both departments at Terra nova will have less responsibilities and more time to work on other projects. Existing system also required a lot of manual work by new accounts department at Terra Nova. This meant that all data collected by old system had to be locked over and approved. A lot of things like generation of account numbers, entries into CRM and entries to the software control system were manual. This could be done automatically by the application but it would take too much of time to update existing system. Project Overview Goals of new Application With all the existing functionality and all the shortcomings in mind management decided to start organizing the project development process. This project was important because it would not only enable new customer to provide all the information needed to open and account with Terra Nova but also be able to send collected information to all partners so customers don‟t have to type in information multiple times. There also would be another step to it that customers wouldn‟t see but would notice. On the backend information put in by customer would flow to the existing CRM system and a lot of automation processes would clean the data and notify New Accounts department about new application. Page 4 . . . . Terra Nova Trading Report of Findings and Recommendations . Taking under consideration all positives and negatives of this project management decided to go . forward with the project and start planning first couple of steps. To develop this project input from . all involved departments would be needed and someone would have to be make sure that there is . ongoing communication between departments and that all decision makers are aware of the progress . and steps that are taken. This task was given to Kevin Ott, an IT manager who also was managing all developers. It was up to him to pick the developers, technology and coordinate all the work. The project initiative would replace existing online application system written in ColdFusion 4.0 with application system written using Microsoft .NET (C#). Because working version with support for two types of applications will have to be operational in 6 months we will have to implement this system in 3 phases. Phase one is already in production. It was released on time with vary few minor problems. Project Deliverables  Phase 1 Deliverables - Navigate Control – depending on account type there will be different set of pages displayed to the user. This system will control the flow of the application. - XML reference files – temporary files that will be populated as user goes through different pages of the application. This also will allow us to have file with information in case something fails in database insertion step. - XML registration files – files for all the dropdown menus and selections. This will reduce number of connections we make to the database to minimum - DB insertion - this piece will process temporary XML files described in point B and insert collected data into database - Supported Account Types - Active Trading - Futures - Internal App – Choose Account Source. – for Internal use only - External App – Pass ID in URL to determine Account Source. – for referral sources - Username generation – based on collected information come up with username and password for trading software (lather passed to software provider) - Tal XML post – post information collected by our online application to our trading software provider - PDF generation – generate PDF files on the fly. Combine different PDF files based on the account type into one PDF file. Once the file is generated populate PDF file with the collected information  Phase 2 Deliverables - Funding Integration – this piece will allow our customers to fund the account at the end of the application - BBCD generation – create account pool system. This will allow us to assign an account number automatically. - Username generation – improve username generation system to include check against software provider‟s database via web service to check if username is unique. - Resume application – this piece will allow our customers to compete some parts of the application and come back few days lather to finish it. - Add new account types  Retirement  Institutional Page 5 . . . . Terra Nova Trading .  Check Writing . .  Phase 3 Deliverables . - Electronic signature . - Future development Additional account types. Report of Findings and Recommendations For our project purposes we will concentrate on first phase in implementation. We will analyze planning, steps that were taken, development process and involvement from other departments. We will also describe some things that may be done differently with our knowledge today. This process will be done with manager on the project and one of the developers involved directly in the project. Why new system? Since the old system did not meet the business requirements, the IT department has decided to put together a project team to create a new on-line system for new application. The team believed that they could do this project in-house by adopting three-tier client/server architecture. Building the new system in-house provided a cost-effective way of expanding a system to grow in the future. Due to the scalability of this advanced technology, the program could be modified and customized the way that is oriented to the functions. The problem with the old application system was time-consuming: it involved many steps and paperwork passing around different departments in order to approve the new application. With expertise and experience that the project team had in the business and technology requirements, they were able to implement a new online application system to accommodate the growing demand for online trading in the company. Problems of the Prior System •Outsourcing •Resources used •Administration and Maintenance •Licensing •Not integrated with CRM •Lack of Automation services on backend •Not scalable •Hard to update       Lead to: Higher Cost $$$$$ High costs due to outsourcing Administration and maintenance difficulties Not integrated with CRM Lack of automation services on backend Not scalable Hard to update Purpose of the New System Project The purpose of creating a new system is to meet the company business objectives which are the followings: Page 6 Terra Nova Trading - . . . . Report of Findings and Recommendations . Increase revenue: the faster it takes to process application and the faster the . customer can start trading from his/her funded account. . Return on investment: no longer need to pay for outsourcing cost . Core strategic leads to Customer Relationship Management . Streamline process, eliminate redundancy from data entry, and avoid customer confusion Benefits of the New System Data integration with CRM Scalable system Reduced number of steps in sign-up process Change technology Used Tie new system to trading software provider Lead to: Higher $$$ Return on Investment Reduced Maintenance costs Allow for custom layouts Advanced User Functionality Better error checking and friendly messages The team is hoping that the new system will bring such benefits to the company. - Cheaper costs to bring the project in-house - Improve system maintenance - Expand a system to grow with business needs - Provide better product to customers - Increase data integration - Leverage provisions for future enhancements - Scalability to move the system to the next level - Improve key resources and value added activities The New System Architecture The new system is developed using 3-tier architecture with SQL Application Server and Cold Fusion language which is a powerful programming tool for creating dynamic web applications. The project involves five developers; three developers come from business development function and two people from the IT department. The group is capable of programming and experience in various computational frameworks like client-server and distributed data warehousing. The tasks on this project include writing functional specifications, database design, data migration, system development, testing, and implementation. The team is working on the developing of the new system which will integrate real-time data with user account management function. The new web-based application is designed to create the benefits to the company as stated below: - Flexible, scalable, open architecture and high system performance - Custom software application development: fit the purpose of each function - Efficiency in business operations: real-time integration with the existing database system - Customer service: to reach the growing market of online investors and support 24/7 global trading - Provisioning for automatic recovery, failover, and tasks management - The new system that is dependable and reliable Page 7 Terra Nova Trading - . . . . Report of Findings and Recommendations . Reduce administrative and support process . Internalization: cross-functional, cooperative among departments . Delivery of up-to-date information . Simplify the common methods of access . Integrate and automate administrative process Future enhancements The New System Layout-Work in Progress Project Plan and Timeline Requirements Terra Nova Trading began the project initiative by defining the project requirements. The company felt that they needed to get the requirements properly defined in order that the project would become successful. Both business and technical staff met during the requirement phase. The phase was broken up into four steps. Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Define Web Site Improvement Requirements Define External & Internal Requirements Define Technology Requirements Define Scalability Requirements  Step 1 – Define Web Site Improvement Requirements Page 8 . . . . Terra Nova Trading Report of Findings and Recommendations . In step 1, the requirement team defined the overall requirements of the projects. The team . defines such items as: . - The new web site look and feel. . - The usability of the web site. . - The system would be federal requirements.  - The ability to register a new customer faster. - The ability to track a new customer better. - The need to eliminate the out source part of the system. - The need for the web system having the ability to grow. Step 2 – Define External and Internal Requirements In step 2, the team defined external and internal customer needs. The team refined and added to requirements in step 1. For example in step 1, Sales want to track new customers better. In this step, the team added to the requirement by adding the requirement of the new system to interface real-time to the CRM System. Step 3 – Define Technology Requirements In step 3, only the technical staff was involved. They had a list of business requirements, which needed technical solutions. The team defined the new web sites technologies of: - Server hardware and operating systems - Database - Software web language - Web authoring tools Step 4 – Define Scalability Requirements The business personnel were very adamant about the system having the ability to grow. In step 4, the technical staff defined standards surrounding the database and coding design to allow for scalability.  Project Planning Kevin Ott put together a „High-Level‟ Project Plan, which consists of five major tasks of Requirements Definitions; Technology Installation; Analysis, Design, and Construction; Testing, and Implementation. The following explains each of the major tasks:  Requirements Definition Page 9 . . . . Terra Nova Trading Report of Findings and Recommendations . The Requirement Definition Major Task began before the project plan was assembled. The . objective of the major task was to define the requirements of the project. The task began on . 2/2/03 and ended on 4/04/03. . .  Technology Installation The Technology Installation Major Task‟s objective was to install the software for the project and to train the technical staff on the new technologies. The software needed to be installd was the Microsoft Sequel Server database, CRM, .NET framework, and web development language. The software installation was scheduled for 30 days. The technical training was schedule for 30 days of training on the new Technologies. The task began on 2/24/03 and ended on 5/28/03.  Analysis, Design, and Construction The Analysis, Design, and Construction major task began on 3/12/03 and ended on 7/18/03. The objective was to design and construct the web site database, customer facing, and business logic. Testing The Testing major task began on 4/16/03 and ended on 8/19/03. The task was broken down into three sub-tasks of Component, System, and Integration testing. The Component testing consisted of testing each database and programming code entity in non-production like environment. The System testing consisted of testing each database and programming code entity in a production like environment, but running independently of each other. The integration testing involved testing all database and programming components similar to a production environment. Implementation The Implementation Major Task began on 8/20/03 and ended on 9/01/03. The implementation involved two sub tasks. The first sub task was to implement the new site. It took 4.5 day to stage the site to go live. It took about 1.5 hours to switch over. The last task was to properly implement the site into the CRM software.   Project Controls Kevin controlled the project through weekly status meeting between the technical staff and business users. Near the end of the project the team met twice a week to insure that every needed item was completed. Project Issues Terra Nova came to the conclusion that their existing online application was starting to cost more and more to maintain. A contractor that was pretty expensive was maintaining it. Even though the old application supported the immediate business needs of Terra Nova, an opportunity was seen to convert the registered users to customers sooner. High contractor costs to maintain the old system coupled with chances of scoring quick wins with quicker conversion led to the birth of the new system developed in house. In the process of this development of the new system, Terra Nova did encounter some issues that we‟ve presented below. Some of these issues did pose significant problems while others can be classified as challenges that were easily solvable. Page 10 . . . . Terra Nova Trading Report of Findings and Recommendations . .  Federal Requirements: . Since Terra Nova is a trading firm they are required by law to follow any federal requirements that come. regarding trade. This in turn can affect the system that Terra Nova has out . implemented. Any changes in the federal requirements will result in Terra Nova making sure that their system is fully compliant. Any non-compliance issues can have serious repercussions on the business. They had to design their system so that it is easily updateable when new federal requirements come out.  Managing individual groups and their requirements: As you know, when building a system for anyone, it seems like everyone has a suggestion or opinion of how the system will work. The system that Terra Nova was building impacted almost every business unit at the company. In turn, every group though the system should be able to do certain things. This became a challenge for the project manager. He was responsible for taking in the suggestions and posing when they would and would not do certain request. There had to be a contact person for each group that was in charge of their business unit. This was the person that was in charge of seeing that each of the federal requirements was met for their unit as well as offering suggestions for the system. Bi-monthly meeting were scheduled with the individual groups to hear and address their concerns with the system. Timelines: Terra Nova had a system that was currently in place and currently working when they began production of the new system. Timelines it seemed were pretty flexible. There were milestones that were set but the deadlines seemed to slide if it was not met. There was also the problem with getting certain deliverable promised by other parties. Any delays had a negative affect on the timelines and deliverables. Project Planning: Terra Nova had a plan for a system that would automate some of the manual processes involved with setting up new accounts. They knew what information they needed from their old system, and what manual processes needed to be automated. However, it did not seem that each of the processes was detailed to its fullest extent. It seemed like that had a good plan for what they wanted the system to do, but did not have a good plan for handling the user requests or changes. They needed to have some sort of control to handle these requests, because as they saw things can quickly get out of hand. Documenting the milestones helped with getting project deliverables, but getting deliverables from other groups proved to be a challenge. Since there was no official deadline, the project seemed to slowly move along until they determined a sufficient launch date. There were no programmers dedicated entirely to the project itself. The resources would sometimes be called off to another “higher priority” projects, and then would jump back in again as soon as that project finished. Scope creep caused phases: Since there were no strict deadlines on the project, the scope began to quickly grow. This in turn led to breaking down user request by priority and putting them into certain phases to be implemented. They needed to get a product out so, they determined what was the minimum necessary requirements to get the product up and running. Any additional tasks were then allocated to different phases to be implemented later on. Database Issues: At the launch of phase one, it was determined that they could not get rid of the old database as planned. Poor planning resulted in the company having to keep both the old database system and the new database system to complete the tasks that were at hand. If there was more time to     Page 11 . . . . Terra Nova Trading Report of Findings and Recommendations . document all the processes that the old system was doing maybe this would not have occurred. . .  Upper Management had to put pressure on groups: It seemed . upper management was getting involved early and often. This was because that individual. groups or units had specific deliverable to complete before the project could advance. Management got involved when these deliverables were not being met and the project had slowed down. In the downtimes the programmers found other item to work on while waiting for the necessary deliverables to move forward. This lead to multiple projects being worked on and longer timelines for completion of the projects.  Usability Issues: After the requirements were gathered, opinions started flying. The issues were on the design and the usability of the new system. In Kevin‟s words Everybody‟s got an opinion and from a base requirement stand point I wouldn‟t say that was the hardest part. Some of that is pretty clear, either it is or it isn‟t. From usability stand point, design stand point, that‟s really where you‟ve got a lot of different opinions on how something should work and how something should look.  New technology usage for a major project: This was more of a testing ground for development team to implement a new technology rather than an issue. The project was implemented using .NET which was new to the team. By bringing in an unfamiliar technology created a learning curve for the development team. This was deemed not to be an issue as long as the team completed the task at hand within a reasonable time frame. Getting business users to commit to a role: The new application was a business critical product. After development on the first phase was done, the old application was still in production and the new product was ready to be launched. It was critical that the users were comfortable using the new application for their needs before it could be released. It was a direct cutover to the new application, but getting the approval from each of the business heads was more complex than anticipated. Suggestions for Terra Nova The issues that came during the software development life cycle were extremely well handled for the most part by management. Based on the issues we identified, we have attempted to document some ideas that might help decision making processes in the future projects by Terra Nova.  More formalized project plan: Since there was really no project plan last time, we suggest that for the next phase that the phase is planned out. This can be done using Microsoft‟s project or creating some sort of Gantt chart using Excel. This will ensure that the milestones and projects deliverable are delivered on time. It will also ensure that each group knows what they are responsible for and outlines the importance of them delivering their items on time. The visual project Page 12 . . . . Terra Nova Trading Report of Findings and Recommendations . plan will provide the teams an idea of the impact of delays on their deliverables. . .  Timelines: . Phase one should be reviewed and analyzed to determine how long it took to do certain . task. Based on that, a timeline should be created to outline when the new task should be completed. This will help all parties to know when to expect certain changes to the system.  More Concrete Deadlines: When planning for phase two we suggest that they have a certain deadline in which any new suggestion would be moved to an additional phase. By having a set deadline, this will help to minimize the scope creep. When there are no or flexible deadlines it seems that the project just continues to grow in size. Having these concrete deadlines allows all parties to stick to what they are asking for the time being and ensures that they think things through thoroughly. More or Better Documentation: The system and its components should be documented for the following reasons: - Makes it easier for updates. If the system is documented properly and changes need to be made, they can be done at a quicker pace because a programmer does not have to take the time to figure out what is actually happening with the code. Having documentation will increase the turn around time on the changes to the system. - Everyone can easily understand what that part of the system is doing. - New people can update the system. - Regulation purposes. Having documentation of the system and the changes to the system makes it easier to ensure that all of the necessary elements are in place for current regulations. If the situation arises that a question about a certain regulation being in place they will have the answer right in front of them instead of having to search for it in the system. Better Requirements gathering phase: The issue was that the project kept growing in scope over time. More requirements kept getting introduced throughout the project. Although some of this is expected, a better designed requirements phase might have been more prudent. Department representatives should have signed off on the project scope in the beginning and project leads should have held the scope. Planning for different phases should have also been done at the same time. Since the majority of issues actually were in the implementation of the requirements (specifically usability issues), a change in project planning for the future phases might be needed. Instead of using the traditional waterfall method (or the spiral method as seems to be used for this specific project), the project might benefit from a prototype development life cycle like Rapid Application Development (RAD).   Conclusion: It was apparent that due to changing requirements and customer demands, the online system Terra Nova was using was fast becoming obsolete. An in-house system was developed to make CRM easier and drive up profitability. A few issues cropped up, but they were generally very well handled. The new online system will help Terra Nova convert to-be customers to customers sooner for greater revenue. Page 13 Terra Nova Trading . . . . . . . . . Report of Findings and Recommendations - End of Report - . Page 14