Flemming's blog on TIA

Retiring this blog

2011-04-29T11:05:00.006+02:00

Just a brief note to let everyone know that I am retiring this blog.

As of May 1st 2011 I am moving into a new position as CTO for ScanJour A/S (www. scanjour.dk)

If you need to contact me, please look up my contact information via LinkedIn.

You are also welcome to follo my new blog ScanJour R&D.

Best regards,
Flemming

TIA relase 6.2 is ready!

2010-11-26T11:13:00.002+01:00

For those interested I can disclose that TIA version 6.2 has been released officially today byt TIA Technoloogy and is available from www.tiatechnology.com.

TIA 6.2 marks the completion of a journey that started with the introduction of the new service-oriented architecture in TIA 6.0, and which now culminates with the delivery of a broad set of additional services on top of a strengthened TIA Solution. Apart from raising the quality bar with a wide range design enhancements and fixes, TIA 6.2 is also very much a feature release, sporting new features in the Policy area (Master Policy and Quote-on-Policy) and new features around the intelligent processing of Claims. A refactoring of Flexible Installment with a new calculation engine for computing installment amounts is also included in TIA 6.2 as well as a completely new and simplified method of handling communication with external third-party interfaces (ICom). And finally, TIA 6.2 is the first TIA version to be tested and released on Oracle Application Server 11g.

TIA 6.2 is available on www.tiatechnology.com and is accessible to customers and partners via the normal secured access. To read more about what’s new in TIA 6.2 please refer to the documentation provided with this release, or contact your TIA account manager for more information.

Looking ahead, the next venture is the introduction of a great new modern user-interface with TIA 7.0. This is already in the making and TIA 7.0 is expected to be delivered at the end of 2011.

Looking for program manager

2010-09-16T13:10:00.002+02:00

Just a brief note that we are looking for a program manager in the development team, should anyone be interested...

Read more at www.tiatechnology.com

The value of integrated solutions

2010-09-07T08:44:00.002+02:00

If you are part of the TIA community you probably know about our solution and the fact that it is an integrated solution for property and casualty insurers.
In many ways the TIA Solution resembles a variety of other standard solutions used for running businesses. Examples could be the SAP Business Suite, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle E-Business suite, Siebel, JD Edwards etc. etc. Although these solutions are not meant for a P&C insurer they share the characteristics of an integrated solution with TIA.
The notion of one integrated standard solution used to manage core parts of an entire business has evolved during the 1990’es and really matured and expanded during the 2000’s. Especially for companies within manufacturing and distribution these solutions have become de-facto standards as opposed to bespoke solutions or knitting together multiple best-of-breed systems.
This trend has during the 2000’s also emerged in the insurance space with the TIA Solution as one of the front-runners - for many good reasons. As I see it the integrated, standard solution has a number of advantages over loosely coupled best-of-breed components.

Predictable release cycle allowing longer term planning
System and integration tested “out-of-the-box”
Common user experience
Single technology platform
Single set of business rules and logic

Predictable release cycles
With an integrated solution like TIA, customers should expect a predictable release cycle from the vendor looking at least 18-24 months ahead. This enables predictable planning within the customers business and IT staff and is a pre-requisite for reaping the benefits of an upgrade path. Customer can harvest the true value of a standard solution, being lower TCO and speed of delivery of new business capabilities, technology enhancements and features in general.

System and integration tested “out-of-the-box”
As opposed to a loosely-coupled, best- of-breed component approach, the integrated solution will deliver high quality across the board, being thoroughly integration and system tested with each release. This reduces the effort significantly at the customer side, lowering the cost of gaining new capabilities in the business. By implementing multiple components from multiple vendors no single entity (besides the customer) has the responsibility for ensuring everything works. I expect this to be the primary reason for the growing success for all integrated standard solutions. Bearing the cost for making sure that everything works requires a significant effort. For the vendor of a standard solution this again requires a significant customer base to fund the quality measures necessary to put in place. Today the TIA Solution has a customer base of more than 50 insurance companies spread across more than 31 countries. This kind of coverage is simply necessary in order to sustain a high quality of deliverables of a standard solution.

Common user experience
The value of users only having to familiarize themselves with single user interface should not be underestimated.
Having one place to find customer information, policy information or claims information with a common user experience is attractive to most users. The ability to move from one or the other part of an application within a familiar user experience lowers the cost and increases the efficiency drastically. The training of users is simplified and the general quality of the data and execution of business processes will be higher than relying on several different user experiences.

Single technology platform
The aspect of technology platform becomes especially interesting when “customizable” standard solutions are in focus. For quite a lot of companies where a standard solution is the choice, the solution may however only meet part of their requirements. Typically what we see is the 90% of our customers’ requirements are met by the solution, but what about the rest? This is where configuration and customization comes into play subsequently the technology platform. By having one integrated solution you will have one technology platform underneath to adopt. In the TIA Solution case that would be the Oracle Fusion stack with the underlying Oracle database.
Imaging having several best of breed solutions/components – each one with it’s own technology stack with it’s own data model, business process language, rules, user experience and release cycle. It can quite fast become quite messy.
By adopting a standard integrated solution much of that complexity is left to the vendor of the solution (like TIA) and resolved once and for all for all customers running the solution. A good example of this is the adoption of new Oracle technologies within the TIA Solution (Oracle 11G Database and middleware releases) or the prebuilt standard interface from TIA to SAS Institute. Developing and testing that everything works is a fairly complex task, which would be cost prohibitive for insurers individually.

Single set of business rules and logic
Avoiding duplication of code is a well-known design goal which helps reduce the maintenance and upgrade cost in the long run. Knowing that data is updated correctly and that business rules are the same no matter what is essential. Consider an example; whether a quote is entered through a user interface or inserted through a web service call , there should only be one set of business logic executed, ensuring correct update of the database. This again also simplifies any customizations required. There is simply only one place to customize the behavior of the logic.

In general it is my opinion that the advantages of a standard solution far outweighs any drawback there could be. Only in very few cases would a unique bespoke system be the choice. This could for instance be in a situation where there is absolutely no “repeatability” identified (“once in a lifetime” examples – like a rocket launch..) or if the usage of the solution is so narrow that there is no one else in the world doing the same. Apart from these examples – where customers are willing to pay an exorbitant amount of money for a unique solution - I would say that a standard solution is preferred.

Then of course the trick is to pick the right one!

Future trends and the insurance industry

2010-09-01T10:03:00.004+02:00

Yesterday I travelled to Genève to partipate in the "Insurance Vision Day" arranged by the standards organizations of ACORD and UN/CEFACT in conjunction. The day was focused on discussing future global trends and the effect on the insurance industry and the role standardization could play in this.

The day was kicked off by futurist David Smith who gave his insight into some of the future trends and how he saw the possible effect on insurance. Later, Jürgen Heck, Program Director, Europe for ACORD gave his perspective from an insurance point of view.

"Customer-ization"
Actually this was a headline identified by the breakout group I participated in. The headline covers several unique trends all pointing to the fact that customers are becoming much more informed and is going to demand services (seemingly) tailored to them. The web 2.0 savvy customer do not only require 24-7 service at the fingertips, but is likely to expect insurance companies to cater for exactly his/her needs and offer products and services matching this. Obviously this will require much more than a corporate web site, and even possibly include offering outside normal insurance products. On my way home in the plane I happened to read about an actual example from Sweden, where the bank Nordea now is offering their young customers free music download besides their normal banking products. Much like TDC in Denmark is bundling music download as an integral part of a broadband mobile or ADSL subscription. For sure the new insurance customers must be met where they are being Facebook or other similar social networks. Apple already has some success selling insurance for their devices on Facebook. Perhaps we will soon see the first social network of people to organize their own “self-insurance”, perhaps all they need is someone to administrate and underwrite it… food for thought.

The aspect of catering to the customers need was not on the top of the list for ACORD members when asked by ACORD what the most important issues they were facing were. In fact, many other issues were brought which to me indicated a more internal view on things. Issues such as increasing sales, reducing costs, talent attraction and more were considered important. I personally believe the #1 issue for insurers should have been providing the best customer/user experience on the market. Simplicity when interacting with customers is the key to success. This requires the right products, the right communication, the best service and the right underlying technology to manage it all. The interesting thing is that the Insurance industry is one of few industries which have absolutely no physical goods as part of the business model. Everything can be digital, which in my mind shows a huge potential for improvement but also exposes a general lack of invention in the industry or willingness to exploit these opportunities.

The Islamic community
In a not so distant future (I forgot the actual year) it is predicted that as much as 25% of the European population will be muslim. This will for sure have an impact on the products and services delivered and those which can be acclaimed to be Halal (allowed according to the Islamic laws). Within insurance the ability to deliver takaful insurance (complying to the islamic rules for how to offer insurance) is a yet unrealized opportunity. This is obviously on top of the rest of the islamic population throughout the rest of the world. Just today in the radio I learned that a French burger chain has tremendous success opening new burger restaurants offering burgers strictly based on Halal meat…unfortunately for insurers this is not “merely” about defining a new product, but will impact the entire operation of the insurer and require a solution to match those demands (e.g TIA).

Standards
So what role does standards play in all of this? Well, for sure the future will bring much more electronic interaction - the ability to transact without paper requires lots and lots of standards for those transactions. The promise of standards will also bring lower costs to insurers, especially if those standards are implemented once and for all in standard solutions such as the TIA solution. In my opinion the road is however long and winding, since agreeing on standards across Europe – not to mention the entire globe – is a complicated matter. I would welcome few simple initiatives (standards) to kick it off, for instance – why don’t we have one common scheme for car manufactures to publish car make/model information…

At TIA we have a dedicated team worrying about local and global standards, implementing these whenever required. An example is the upcoming European standard for payment transactions (SEPA) which we are currently looking into (in it’s various local flavors).

All in all a good day where some interesting discussions took place, however without any clear conclusion or direction. The future of the insurance industry has yet to materialize

On my way for the TIA community conference

2010-05-25T14:13:00.006+02:00

This years TIA conference for customers and partners is held at the Mövenpick Hotel, Amsterdam. Attendance is (again) record breaking and I am looking forward to meet customers and partners.

We have really made an effort this year to put together a professional conference with lots of information and dialog opportunities.

I sincerily hope that all participants will seize the opportunity to provide feedback about how we are doing at TIA Technology in terms of product development as well as support, professional services and other interaction.

At the conference we are going to talk about future roadmap, new initiatives as well as in-depth sessions of new features and functionality following the latest release 6.1 and the 6.0 release from 2009. All hands from TIA Technology will be on deck to participate in "meet the experts" forums. In general we believe this is close to being the largest insurance related conference this year taking place in Europe.

I believe the TIA Solution is showing the way in terms of standardizing the P&C insurance software and providing lowest TCO and fastest ROI on the market. The unique business model with the standard TIA solution localized for each market and being implemented and deployed by a dedicated partner network brings a great value proposition to customers and is highly scalable.

The TIA solution is growing in breadth and depth in terms of business functionality supporting increasingly larger insurers. The technology platform is likewise evolving with a new Service Oriented Architecture now capable of fitting into a complex heterogeneuos IT infrastructure. Based upon Java, the Oracle SOA Suite and the Oracle Application Development Framework with a central business logic repository in PL/SQL the solution is ready for the future while delivering unprecendented proven, stable, performing and reliable business process execution.

For those attending TCC 2010, I am looking forward to demonstrate all of this in details and I will see you Wednesday (partners) through Friday (partners & customers) for a jam-packed conference.

TIA release 6.1 has shipped

2010-01-29T11:15:00.002+01:00

Just a brief note that we have released TIA version 6.1. More information is available for customers and partners at http://www.tiatechnology.com/

Programming in PL/SQL and Java

2009-10-13T14:16:00.003+02:00

For those of you who have worked with the TIA Solution in more details, you know that the programming language PL/SQL for many years has been a central tool in the making of it. This is the language our business logic is written in, and it continues to serve us well in terms of features, performance and productivity.

Sometimes we meet people who are not used to the Oracle technology stack including the PL/SQL language. A few of those find it intriguing that TIA relies on a language “invented” many years ago. What we usually do is to explain the benefits of PL/SQL which we believe by far outweigh the drawbacks. Usually PL/SQL is being compared to slightly newer languages like Java or C#. The benefit to TIA Technology by writing business logic in PL/SQL is centered on productivity and performance. The TIA solution is an extremely feature rich integrated solution capabæe of supporting thousands of users, where most of the business benefits are based upon data access and manipulation of the data. As such the TIA solution is a traditional database heavy solution with less emphasis on advanced graphical user interfaces. Furthermore, we have deliberately made a choice only to utilize the Oracle database. Because of this we can utilize PL/SQL with all of its most advanced features inside the Oracle database to quickly get to the most optimal and best performing business logic with the least effort for the developers. We basically do not have to write any “plumbing” code to get the desired results in terms of updating the database. Compared to Java and C#, these languages do not have any elegant built-in runtime support for accessing a database. SQL statements have to be embedded in the code as textual strings and there is usually a lot of plumbing code which has to be written and maintained when writing business logic. And since TIA does not have to deal with the complexity of being database agnostic there is really no gain – just pain, should we choose to write business logic in Java instead of PL/SQL.

More information on PL/SQL can be found through Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL/SQL). If anyone has a deeper interest in why PL/SQL is a good choice for an Oracle application like the TIA Solution, please check out http://www.developer.com/db/article.php/3308841/Sample-Chapter-Efficient-PLSQL.htm .

Now, the fact that most of the business logic resides inside the Oracle database and is written in PL/SQL does not mean that Java is out of the question. On the contrary, Java plays an increasingly important role for the TIA solution as a programming language. We have merely decided that we want to use Java where it is best, which we believe is for creating middle-tier components and user interface. To that end, TIA began the journey into Java land a few years ago, when programming for version 6.0 started. With the 6.0 release in March, the first real Java components were released, enabling TIA to fit into a modern service oriented architecture. We are now in the middle of releasing all of the services forming our service catalogue and of course Java plays a key role in that. This also means that our partners will have to look to Java to build up skills. Having Java knowledge and specifically experience with the Oracle SOA suite will become an important aspect of working with the TIA Solution in the future. And that will be amplified when we are gradually moving into utilizing the Oracle Application Development Framework to design and build the TIA solution.

We believe that it is wise for everybody to choose the optimal tool to get the work done. Do not use a hammer to drive in a screw.

When making the world’s best general insurance solution, we believe the right choice is PL/SQL for business logic and Java for the rest.

Version 6.0 released on March 31st!

2009-04-24T13:46:00.002+02:00

As planned, we released the TIA solution version 6.0 on March 31st 2009. The software and other deliverables are ready for download through www.tia.dk for customers and partners.

This represents a significant milestone for us at TIA Technology and a leap ahead in terms of the Service Oriented Architecture we are introducing with version 6.

With the new release and subsequent releases 6.1 and 6.2, customers will benefit from a modern service oriented architecture which fit into a service infrastructure in order to simplify integration and customization of the TIA solution.

This will in turn lead to reduced cost for customers who want to plug TIA into an existing IT infrastructure and at the same time significantly reduce the time to market for new P & C business initiatives and products.

At TIA we are continuing to evolve the solution with new planned features for version 6.1 and 6.2 as well as the delivery of the entire service catalog, which is documented and described in detail with release of version 6.0.

At our upcoming customer seminar in Copenhagen, May 28-29, we will be presenting version 6.0 together with key messages about the future roadmap and plans. Included in that is several keynotes with focus on our customers and how they can expand through increased effectiveness and how we at TIA are dedicated to continued predicatability in or market offerings whilst maintaining agility to deliver immediate value in the current market conditions.

See you at the International User Group meeting, Copenhagen May 2009.

Version 6.0 progress report

2009-02-11T07:59:00.004+01:00

With my first blogpost in 2009 I would like to send greetings to all my readers from a currently snow covered Copenhagen, Denmark. It's been a while since my last post, which primarily is caused by the fact that we are busy with the final stages of the upcoming version 6.0 as well as exciting new customer opportunities.

Currently the development team at TIA is in the stabilization phase of version 6.0 which means we are system and integration testing the new features and the SOA arhitecture and completing the upcoming service catalog. We have completed the first test pass with succes and is currently fixing the remaining bugs found during this. Subsequently new test passes are planned before release currently slated for end of march.

Version 6.0 introduces a new Service Oriented Architecture as well as numerous application enhancements and features including a new module for complaints management. We are looking forward to presenting this and much more at our international user group conference - this time to be held in Copenhagen in May.

In parallel with finalizing the new release, we have begun the envisioning phase for what comes next. With that, we are encouraging our customers and partners to provide feedback and ideas for new features, modules, enhancements etc. Let us know what you belive it's important we focus on through www.tia.dk, comment to my blog, by phone or mail.

TIA Newsletter

2008-12-04T15:15:00.004+01:00

The December edition of the TIA customer newsletter was just sent out to subscribers. If you would like to receive the newsletter, please send an e-mail to support@tia.dk and we will add you to the distribution list.

The newsletter contains various information about the TIA product, company and community in general.

Configuration management

2008-11-06T15:53:00.003+01:00

I'd really like a bit more feedback from the TIA community on my blog postings. Sometimes I am wondering if anyone is actually out there :-). I did see some of you on our International Partner Symposium Thursday/Friday last week, but there has to be more of you with an opinion!

To stir things up a bit - let me introduce a pretty interesting topic - configuration management.

In TIA we have the Workbench. This is a tool designed for many things (maybe too many actually). Among other things we are currently using it internally to manage the source code and configuration management of our releases.

Now - my question is - who amongst our customers and partners cares about the workbench? if so - what are you using it for - managing source code, customization and deployment?

Right now we are having many discussions internally in TIA about the Workbench and configuration management in general. Partly because we are growing significantly in terms of people involved in development, and partly because new Java components (other than PL/SQL object) are being introduced (which not necessarily are closely related to the Workbench).

What are your thoughts and comments to this topic? Do you care about the Workbench? Please post your comments to this article...

5.2 Service Pack 1 released

2008-10-31T12:30:00.003+01:00

Just a quick note that service pack 1 for version 5.2 is now available for download at the TIA website.

The service pack contains a broad set of fixes as well as a significant update to the batch system.

Partnering for success

2008-10-15T14:04:00.002+02:00

The TIA business model relies on strong partner alliances for implementing the TIA solution. One of the key reasons for the success of TIA can be contributed to this model, which provides the necessary scalability in terms of skills, resources and geographical spread.
In order for this model to work, we need our partners to be constantly up-to-date with our products, sales and services. We are seeking to achieve this in various ways, for instance by arranging specific events where we inform our partners about sales strategy, upcoming new product features and product development plans in general. Such an event is taking place this end of October in Copenhagen, where we expect a significant number of partners attending to learn about our plans in details.
If you are a TIA partner, please contact us if you would like to attend this event.

Software localization and TIA

2008-07-07T09:24:00.001+02:00

A key part of our strategy at TIA – and one of the things which I believe differentiates TIA from many competitors is the uniqueness of a standard solution which can be used across many geographies. The reason for this is of course the ability to customize TIA, but just as important the level of localization of the product to fit local requirements.

Localizing a product as TIA, which is targeted at business processes is much more than merely translating the software. In fact, this is just the beginning. For a vertical solution targeting the insurance business, it is a key requirement that it fits well with local standards. This includes support of common interfaces, legislation, practices etc.

In order for TIA to handle this, the solution has from the beginning been architected in such a way that it is possible to create and maintain what is called “country layers”. A country layer is a collection of features supporting the requirements in a certain country or region.

The creation and design of a country layer is not a trivial exercise. It requires deep knowledge about the local practices combined with a solid insight into TIA. We are currently expanding our work in terms of building and supporting a number of country layers. This work is being carried out by TIA and selected partners providing local knowledge and product development skills.

Another aspect is specifically how these local features are developed and implemented. There are different strategies you can apply when doing this. One strategy, which we see happening with many competitors, is the development of local features in a one-off exercise with individual customers as an integral part of the customer implementation. By doing this, the customer will typically end up with a legacy product where the implemented code is not generic. There are many concerns about this method like no re-use, no portability of the code and low upgrade possibility of the standard solution.The right approach is to build a country layer in a generic way to be used for all customers in a certain country/region. This key to this is local functionality being coordinated and built into the standard solution. This in effect means that the standard solution eventually will include local functionality for all supported countries/regions - and it will enable the use of different local features across several countries/regions within one implementation. Only by having this approach you ensure re-use and eventually a lower cost and upgradeability. This approach is what we apply at TIA.

IUG report #2

2008-06-12T20:19:00.002+02:00

After spending two days in Riga with customers and partners I have a very good feeling about where TIA is going as a company as well as a product.

Delivering a conference with broad content focusing on the TIA solution was a deliberate choice from our side in TIA. Considering the feedback we have received so far it was a right one.

During the two days TIA employees delivered presentations describing new features relating to insurance specific processes as well as new technology advances for our Service Oriented Architecture. Based on the very positive reactions from the audience during the sessions, we definately believe we are moving in the right direction and doing the right things for partners and customers.

If you were in Riga, let me know your comments and thoughts as comments and stay tuned to my blog, which in a near future will have new topics around localization as well as insurance specific features.

IUG report #1

2008-05-29T10:49:00.002+02:00

The 7th annual TIA International User Conference has kicked off in Riga with presentations by the chairman of the board, Lars Lysdahl, CIO Alm Brand, Evalds Trucksans /IT and Operations Director AAS Balta and finally Morten B Stener, CEo Tia Technology who is currently speaking.

With a record number of participants of 180 people the scene is set for two very interesting days.

Lars Lysdahl opened the conference commenting on the past year seen from a customer and user group perspective. Some of the things Lars mentioned was focused at making this a fresh start with increased interaction between the user group and TIA technology in terms of product feedback and new development. The coming year will be dedicated to an effort revitalizing the regional user groups and strenghtening the community.

Evalds trucksans gave a very good introduction to Balta, the leading insurance company in the area and a user of the TIA solution. Evalds also gave a good insight into Latvia demographics and the historic perspective of the 800 years old town in Riga.

Morten Steiner is currently speaking giving an overview of TIA Technology's strategy, perspectives on focus areas and a general welcome to the TIA customers and partner.

There is no doubt that people are ready for more information and two exciting days. Stay tuned for further updates from the conference as we move forward.

User Group Conference in Riga this week

2008-05-27T11:27:00.002+02:00

As this is written most people at TIA is putting the final touch on the preparation for the 2008 user group conference in Riga. Some of us have already departed for Riga and the rest will follow tomorrow wednesday. We are very much looking forward to two exciting days packed with content about past, present and future of the TIA solution and community.

I will take this opportunity to remind you of the newly established discussion forums at Goggle Groups (http://groups.google.com/group/tia-community) where we have prepared a forum for you to enter questions, comments, viewpoints etc. around the TIA solution and the conference in particular. TIA participants will monitor the discussions and reply as relevant.

In Riga we are announcing several new initiatives relating to the TIA solution - if you are participating you will definately get the opportunity to provide feedback and input for future development and enhancements to the solution.

Friday morning I will be presenting the keynote for TIA product strategy and throughout Thursday and Friday there will be lots of presentations detailing existing and future feature areas of TIA.

For those not present in Riga, stay tuned to this blog, I will certainly try to find time to report from the conference during the two days.

See you in Riga!

OFF-SHORING; would you do it?

2008-05-17T18:26:00.001+02:00

This week I went to Bangalore, India, to better understand aspects of off-shoring maintenance, development and test work within a software development team.
Bangalore is, as you may know, a central hub for a large population of well-educated, well-trained and ambitious engineers within software development.

In TIA we are considering how to tap into this in relation to our development work and not at least maintenance of the released versions.

Arriving at Bangalore it is clear that India is nowhere near anything like the small country of Denmark, from where TIA origins. The Indian population is huge, the chaos (at least in traffic as I saw it) quite overwhelming, but you also get the impression, that these are people who wants to achieve a lot. Ignoring the occasional cow that disturbs the flow of traffic, the strategy of the Indians seems to be to always look for the best way of moving forward and then just go. Every inch of asphalt is being used. The infrastructure of Bangalore still is leaving something to be wished for, but I did not see any real serious jams through the intersections…

The visit for me was a confirmation, that if you select the right partner you will not just get access to a pool of resources; there is a good chance that you may even learn a thing or two. The operations we saw was certified at CMMi level 5, had several thousand engineers residing in the buildings and hired another thousand people across it’s locations in India each month.
The point of this is that when considering using off-shoring resources it may actually not be a question of whether they are up to the task, but whether you are.

Previously the word has been that Indian IT resources may be technically good, but did not know posess any domain knowledge. As far as I can tell even this is quickly changing. Partly because specific domain knowledge is fast being built up through on-the-job training working with domain issues – also within Insurance. And partly because it seems to be getting increasingly more interesting for Indian born people who have been living and working abroad for many years, to return to their native country; and with that – bringing back strong experience and domain skills.

Off-shoring any work requires that you start with realizing you have to be very structured with your requirements. You should know and describe exactly what you need. Over the last 20 years I don’t think this has been the most popular way of developing software for many programmers. What the heck – let’s talk to the customer and write the code – it’s way more fun than writing documents. Well - I certainly understand why programmers would prefer to spend time writing code as opposed to writing documents. I actually think we should work hard to let them do just this – writing code. Which again basically means that we should have someone else writing the requirements specifications! And those guys need to understand the business. Being more strict and structured in the requirements work is a good thing whether considering off-shoring or not. But if you want to send work abroad and work with people trained and working at a CMMi level 5 you better be good at it.

Another aspect I was interested in was the approach around testing. In India testing seems to be just a prestigious career path as programming, with several skill levels from junior test engineers to highly esteemed test architects. This is definitely hard to find in the Nordic region, where it seems that many people find testing a second rang discipline. From my experience, there is absolutely nothing second rang about testing highly complex business solutions – especially within the Insurance industry. This requires a solid technical background mixed with a passion for quality, building and using the right toolsets and finding those highly costly bugs in the products.

My conclusion from the short visit to India is that we should strive to be able to tap into this pool of resources. And we should use it as a way to improve our own internal processes and turn software development even more into a predictable process. One where creativity is applied at requirements and design time, but not to actually getting the things coded, tested and brought to life. The latter are disciplines where you do not need creativity but predictability. And in the end this is what I believe customers are looking from their vendor. Predictable features, at a predictable time, in a predictable quality. And so – it’s all about predictability.

At TIA we will be using off-shoring going forward – would you?

Why independent user groups are a good thing for a software company

2008-04-03T15:19:00.002+02:00

These days I am talking quite a lot to the national TIA user groups as well as our international user group. One of the topics we discuss is the relevance of a user group and what the focus of such a group should be. In TIA context our user groups have our customers as members. Naturally I can only have an opinion because as the software vendor TIA should not be driving the user groups. However my opinion is as follows.
Any professional software developer need and should want candid feedback about the products they put on the market as well as the plans for new products and enhancements. In fact, getting customer feedback and opinions should be priority one for the software vendor since it is a key relationship ensuring the right product. And as anyone knows - if you don’t have the right product someone else will - and you’re out.
I have sometimes met the following excuses for not listening to customers (although typically not said out lout) :

We know what they are going to say already
We don’t like what they are saying
We don’t want to raise false expectations and
We don’t want to commit to anything…

I think these are very common perceptions – not at least in developer communities populated by engineers who tend to know everything already – and I can safely say that because I am one myself. We are designing solutions behind our desks with our fingers bleeding, and by golly - if we could just be left in peace to get that final bug fixed!
The problem really is that even though engineers THINK they know everything, they of course really don’t. We may be smart as hell about many things, but with a profound wish to be left alone with the technical challenges, we typically overlook the most obvious stuff to (real world) users. To proof my point just think of the hype around Second Life . An imaginary world obviously designed by a bunch of engineers going crazy about the fantastic possibility of (non) interacting with other people whilst sitting alone behind their screen. No wonder these things come - and go again. Even engineers – most at least – prefer the blood and flesh from real people.
I believe there is an analogy to user groups here. Even though you can carry out surveys, support and similar things from the safe haven of your chair, you really need to talk directly to customers to understand the true priorities and concerns. This is where user groups are relevant and good for you as a software vendor. And they should of course be independent – shoving words down the throat of your users brings you absolutely nowhere. Organized well and inhabited by engaged members, as a software vendor you can count on getting the truth about your product – and you better listen. Even though you have heard it before, even though you do not like it and even though you really can’t commit to fix their problems at any time soon, you WILL be wiser listening and you SHOULD care.

Visiting IBM Forum La Gaude

2008-03-05T22:06:00.001+01:00

Monday and Tuesday this week I was part of a small delegation visiting IBM’s industry solution center, IBM Forum La Gaude at La Gaude, Nice. The participants were representatives from selected Nordic insurance companies plus two of us representing TIA Technology. The focus of the visit was getting a glimpse into the possibilities when IBM applies its muscles to innovation in the insurance industry.

First of all I will make a short note - coming from many months of rain in Denmark visiting Nice in March was a nice change – including seeing the sun and the snow covered mountains. At least until I broke my glasses Tuesday night – after that most of the things at a distance got a bit blurred.

La Gaude is one out of several industry solutions centers across the world where IBM showcases its latest technology solutions within a variety of industries including insurance. During the two days we saw a selection of prototypes and sample applications relating to claims processing, call center applications, home surveillance solutions, tele health care, insurance sales processes and more. Everything put together by IBM in cooperation with several ISV’s and partners.

All in all a pretty impressive collection of demos from which I am sure all of the people watching could be inspired. The actual technologies behind the demos seemed to me to be available on the market today, the impressive thing was the time and effort it must have taken to put it together and make it work. Some of the underlying concepts I believe I saw put in use was web services, SMS gateways, RFID tracking, rich client applications using Eclipse, remote web cam surveillance, secure signature pads and more. The technologies were applied to insurance scenarios for claims processing, sales quoting and others.

Overall two interesting days and most relevant for insurance companies as well as us in TIA Technology to get an impression of what is available and possible for our customers today in terms of technology and innovation from IBM.

Finally I cannot help sending a thank to Anders from IBM how arranged the trip and especially the amazing experience in French cuisine Tuesday night, where a seven course dinner was served with several delicacies including Oyster ice cream (!), lamps feet and pork brain. Never have I tried anything quite like it :-).

A couple of weeks in the life at TIA Technology

2008-02-19T16:33:00.001+01:00

The last couple of weeks have been pretty busy at TIA. During January we have been working hard on customer cases and the last few weeks the activity level has been even higher stepping up our work with the next version of TIA.

Customer support push
Throughout January the entire development and support team have been focused at our customers and helping out resolving issues and cases on our released versions. A significant number of reported cases have been resolved and fixes are going into the coming service packs for version 5.0 and 5.2 respectively. We have been in close dialog with user groups as well as several customers directly and we appreciate the candid feedback we have got - which undoubtedly will help all customers going forward with solutions to known issues in several parts of the TIA application.

Upcoming TIA User Group seminar in Riga
Since my last posting we have sent out invitations to our user group seminar in Riga. If you are part of the TIA community you should have received this already. If not – let us know at user_group@tia.dk. In this year’s seminar you will get an opportunity to learn about most of the things we are working with at TIA – in product development, sales, support and more. We have planned an elaborate number of sessions with in-depth information about our product and development plans going forward. Additional we are planning to present a couple of key-note sessions with TIA speakers as well as select external speakers. Besides (what we believe) is a very interesting program you will also get an opportunity to link up with colleagues, friends and others from the TIA community in a social atmosphere. I hope to see you at the IUG 2008 in Riga.

TIA LinkedIn community group
Talking about the TIA community – if you are familiar with www.linkedin.com we have now created a LinkedIn group called TIA. If you are part of the TIA community either as a partner or customer, you are welcome to send a request to join this group at LinkedIn – it is a prerequisite that you are registered on LinkedIn. If you do so, the group participation will allow you to search and discover other members in the TIA community and enable you to link with those for business or other purposes. We hope you take advantage of this opportunity. Use this link to request participation: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/50465/0A934B17B336.

In Riga we are also planning to demonstrate and disclose our detailed plan for the upcoming version of TIA. It will be focused at enabling integration of TIA in a heterogeneous IT infrastructure supporting service oriented architecture. We are currently deeply into the work of formalizing the TIA Service Catalog as well as preparing the first application using services exposed by TIA. If you are a customer looking to deploy TIA in a SOA environment or a partner needing to understand our strategy in this area you should definitely be at the Riga seminar to learn about the fundamentals.

My first posting - getting started

2008-01-03T14:27:00.000+01:00

I have now been at TIA Technology A/S for almost five months - the famous first 100 days+ are gone as fast as a formula one car...

During this period I have been focused at learning and understanding the insurance software business and - not at least - the TIA philosophy, challenges and opportunities. I won't say I've been through all there is to know, but then again I do believe I have picked up a few interesting points.

At TIA we are currently working hard at creating new exciting insurance solutions as well as focusing on enhancing our existing solutions on the market.

In the discussions we have with customers we find a common interest in industrializing the solutions in terms of terminology, processes and capabilities. For this reason we are (among others) spending time looking into IAA/CBM by IBM. The insurance application architecture and the component busines model is interesting because it provides a solid common ground for discussing how to fit into a service oriented architecture.

For the TIA solution and the "SOAfication" of the solution it is paramount to achieve the right level of granularity from the beginning. Not at least because the TIA solution is customizable. We are working on designing the next version of TIA to work in an SOA environment and applying common priciples for this (a good simple document to get an overview of these priciples can be found here.

Another topic we are considering these days is how to achieve a better access to and content for the documentation accompanying TIA. One of the tests we are currently running internally is making documentation available as a TIA Wiki. Any comments/suggestion you may have on this is highly appreciated.

We are also spending time preparing our annual user group seminar to be held in Riga, Latvia this time. End of May we are meeting with customers and partners to discuss common interests. This time the seminar will have a substantial content around the TIA solution and my team is dedicated to bring a lot of exciting sessions and presentations. Stay tuned for upcoming invitations to this event.

Finally - as this is my first posting regarding my work at TIA I am pretyy excited to see whether it is actually gaining interest among the TIA community. Therefore - if you have comments don't hesitate to respond through this blog.