CheckFree

Challenges

• Rapid growth
• Issue management
• Accountability and ownership

Solution

Serena TeamTrack streamlines and automates change management

Results

• Ownership and accountability for every issue
• Real-time visibility into project status
• Powerful reporting to support continuous improvement
• Faster, higher-quality resolutions
• Improved collaboration due to web-based access

“Not only has communication improved, but TeamTrack has provided accountability and ownership for issues. It's been a fundamental part of our whole development process, driving projects to a quick and accurate resolution.”
-Brent Dickinson, Software Verification Architect, CheckFree.

Overview

CheckFree Corporation provides financial electronic commerce services and products to organizations around the world. With skyrocketing Internet use fueling growth, the company implemented Serena® TeamTrack® to increase efficiency, enhance issue management, and maintain IT quality.

CheckFree relies on TeamTrack workflows to visualize, orchestrate, and enforce application development, software quality, and product development processes across three divisions. TeamTrack improves communication and provides a process for accountability and ownership of issues. The system’s powerful reporting capabilities drive continuous improvement, generating a record of every issue resolution and providing data points that the company can use over time to pinpoint problem areas, trends, and improvements. TeamTrack has been instrumental in helping CheckFree improve quality—supporting the company’s pursuit of Six Sigma standards and contributing to CheckFree’s achievement of 99.999% dial-tone quality (a measure of site accessibility).

Challenge

Every day, millions of people around the world log onto the Internet to make purchases, invest money, perform account transactions, view and pay bills, and monitor accounts. Behind many of these functions, CheckFree Corporation works to make online financial transactions safe, secure, and reliable.

CheckFree provides electronic billing and payment options to more than 1,300 consumer service providers, including banks, brokerage firms, Internet portals and personal financial management software. Overall, the company enables 14 million people to receive and pay bills electronically, which adds up to an annual run rate of over 100 million e-bills.

Founded in 1981, CheckFree has led the financial electronic services and products revolution by regularly upgrading its existing products and adding new ones to meet the rising needs of consumers. As the company has grown and expanded, and Internet use has skyrocketed, CheckFree has recognized the need to increase its resources in order to continue providing superior products and support a growing number of consumers.

“It was getting harder and harder to keep up with customer demand,” said Brent Dickinson, a software verification architect with CheckFree. “We decided on a change management system to help increase efficiency and ensure that no problems would fall through the cracks.”

Solution

CheckFree decided to implement Serena® TeamTrack® to increase efficiency, enhance issue management, and maintain the IT quality that had fueled their growth. Initially, they implemented a simple workflow for developers and quality assurance testers. Today, the company has as many as eight TeamTrack workflows that allow them to visualize, orchestrate, and enforce application development, software quality and product development processes.

CheckFree, which has offices throughout the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada supporting some 900 users, believes two capabilities set TeamTrack apart from competitive offerings: distributed access and extensive reporting. TeamTrack’s cross-platform support and universal access accommodates CheckFree’s distributed work force. The web-based architecture eliminates the need to distribute, install, configure, or maintain the software in various locations with different platforms. It also allows for use from home, or work, or anywhere a CheckFree employee has access to a computer and an Internet connection.

Results

TeamTrack has improved communication throughout CheckFree’s application development, software quality, and product development organizations and provided a process for accountability and ownership. The system’s powerful reporting capabilities drive continuous improvement, generating a record of every issue resolution and providing data points that the company can use over time to pinpoint problem areas, trends, and improvements. 

“Not only has communication improved, but TeamTrack has provided accountability and ownership for issues,” explained Dickinson. “It's been a fundamental part of our whole development process, driving projects to a quick and accurate resolution.”

TeamTrack has been instrumental supporting the company’s pursuit of Six Sigma standards and contributing to CheckFree’s achievement of 99.999% dial-tone quality.  “CheckFree is a pioneer in the financial services sector in regards to Six Sigma verification, and TeamTrack has been a key component in allowing us to achieve that leadership position,” Dickinson said.

In addition, TeamTrack’s customizability has allowed CheckFree to leverage the tool for other applications including requirements tracking, enhancement requests, questions, and ideas.  “The ease of reporting allows us to focus more time on what we’re supposed to be doing, producing quality software for customers, instead of spending time on the business processes,” Dickinson said.

“CheckFree is a pioneer in the financial services sector in regards to Six Sigma verification, and TeamTrack has been a key component in allowing us to achieve that leadership position.”

- Brent Dickinson, Software Verification Architect, CheckFree