Outsourced Project Management for Telecom Billing Software Development

Customer

The Customer is a national GSM operator with more than 5M subscribers and a member of Europe’s leading telecommunication holding.

Challenge

The company decided to upgrade its billing solution to streamline complex charging processes and introduce convenient customer self-service options. The Customer relied on a third-party managed telecom IT vendor to implement the new system. Despite the plan to complete the project in 2 years, the development stretched over more than 4 years. The vendor failed to carefully coordinate the communication and development activities between the Customer’s team and multiple involved vendors, which hindered the project pace.

To bring its billing software development project to the predictable rails and speed up the progress, the Customer sought professional project management competencies with solid background in corporate finance. ScienceSoft came across as a trustworthy vendor with 10 years of experience in managed financial software development.

Solution

ScienceSoft assigned an experienced project manager to work within the Customer’s development team on a full-time basis. Following a 2 weeks’ catch-up with the workflow, our project manager was able to foresee potential problems in the development process, so that the Customer could take corrective measures.

ScienceSoft introduced a distinct system of release planning and managed to reduce the testing cycle time from 4–6 to just 2 weeks.

Based on the statistics and close cooperation with all the parties involved, the project manager was continuously assessing the vendors’ commitments to timely deliver the upcoming releases. Thanks to this information, the Customer could plan the development to avoid fines caused by delays on their side.

During the steering committee monthly meetings, ScienceSoft’s project manager presented reports on progress and planning, which allowed both Customer’s and vendors’ managers to agree on the terms of subsequent deliveries.

Results

The project manager’s expertise in running billing system development projects helped the Customer increase the transparency of the ongoing development process, improve the collaboration with its multiple vendors, and accelerate delivery. The billing system was successfully launched within the agreed timelines and let the Customer easily introduce new tariff plans and services to telecom clients.