Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on how a major healthcare software provider is using HP tools to move from waterfall to agile.

1. Application Development Efficiencies Drive Agile Payoffs
for Healthcare Tech Provider TriZetto
Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on how a major healthcare software provider is using
HP tools to move from waterfall to agile.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Sponsor: HP
Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the next edition of the HP Discover Performance
Podcast Series. I'm Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your
moderator for this ongoing discussion of IT innovation and how it’s making an
impact on people’s lives.
Once again, we're focusing on how IT leaders are improving their services'
performance to deliver better experiences and payoffs for businesses and end
users alike, and this time we're coming to you directly from the HP Discover 2013
Conference in Las Vegas. [Disclosure: HP is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]
We’re here the week of June 10 to explore some award-winning case studies from leading
enterprises. And we’ll see how a series of innovative solutions and IT transformation approach to
better development and test and deployment of applications is benefiting these companies.
Our next innovation case study interview highlights how TriZetto has been improving its
development processes and modernizing its ability to speed the development process, and bring
better tools for its internal developers as well as support a lifecycle approach to software.
To learn more about how TriZetto is modernizing its development and deployment capabilities,
please join me in welcoming Rubina Ansari, the Associate Vice President of Automation and
Software Development Lifecycle Tools at TriZetto. Welcome.
Rubina Ansari: Thank you, Dana.
Gardner: We hear a lot about improving software capabilities, and agile of course is an
important part of that. Tell me where you are in terms of moving to agile processes, and we’ll get
more into how you're enabling that through tools and products?
Ansari: TriZetto currently is going through an evolution. We’re going through a structured
waterfall-to-scaled-agile methodology. As you mentioned, that's one of the innovative ways that
we're looking at getting our releases out faster with better quality, and be able to respond to our
customers. We realize that agile, as a methodology, is the way to go when it comes to all those
three things I just mentioned.
We're currently in the midst of evolving how we work. We’re going through a major
transformation within our development centers throughout the country.

2. Gardner: And software is very important to your company, tell us why and then a little bit about
what TriZetto does?
Ansari: TriZetto is a healthcare software provider. We have the software for all areas of
healthcare. Our mission is to integrate different healthcare systems to make sure our customers
have seamless information. Over 50 percent of the American insured population goes through
our software for their claims processing. So, we have a big market and we want to stay there.
Leaner and faster
Our software is very important to us, just as it is to our customers. We're always looking for
ways of making sure we’re leaner, faster, and keeping up with our quality in order to keep up
with all the healthcare changes that are happening.
Gardner: You've been working with HP Software and Application Lifecycle Management
(ALM) products for some time. Tell us a little bit about what you have in place, and then let's
learn a bit more about the Asset Manager capabilities that you're pioneering?
Ansari: We've been using HP tools for our testing area, such as the QTP Products Performance
Center and Quality Center. We’ve recently went ahead with ALM 11.5, it has a
lot of cross-project abilities. As for agile, we're now using HP Agile Manager.
This has helped us move forward fairly quickly into scaled agile using HP
Agile Manager, while integrating with our current HP tools. We wanted to
make sure that our tools were integrated and that we didn’t lose that
traceability and the effectiveness of having a single vendor to get all our data.
Gardner: You were early adopter of the Asset Manager product. For our listeners, what does that
do, and why is it important for you?
Ansari: HP Agile Manager is very important to us. It's a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, and
it was very easy for us to implement within our company. There was no concept of installing, and
the response that we get from HP has been very fast, as this is the first experience we’ve had with
a SaaS deliverable from HP.
They're following agile, so we get releases every three months. Actually, every few weeks, we
get enhancements for defects we may find within their product. It's worked out very well. It's
very lightweight, it's web-based SaaS and it integrates with their current tool suite, which was
vital to us.
Gardner: And how large of an organization are you in terms of developers, and how many of
them are actively using these products?

3. Ansari: We have between 500 and 1,000 individuals that make up development teams
throughout United States. For Agile Manager, the last time we checked, it was approximately
400. We're hoping to get up to 1,000 by end of this year, so that way everyone is using Agile
Manager for all their agile/scrum teams and their backlogs and development.
Gardner: Tell us a bit also about how paybacks are manifesting themselves. Do you have any
sense of how much faster you're able to develop? What are the paybacks in terms of quality,
traceability, and tracking defects? What's the payback from doing this in the way you have?
Working together
Ansari: We’ve seen some, but I think the most is yet to come in rolling this out. One of the
things that Agile Manager promotes is collaboration and working together in a scrum team. Agile
Manager, having the software work all around the agile processes, makes it very easy for us to
roll an agile methodology.
This has helped us collaborate better between testers and developers, and we're
finding those defects earlier, before they even happen. We’ll have more hard
metrics around this as we roll this out further. One of the major reasons we
went with HP Agile Manager is that it has very good integration with the
development tools we use.
They integrate with several development tools, allowing our testers to be able to see what
changes occurred, what piece of code has changed for each defect enhancement that the tester
would be testing. So that tight integration with other development tools was a very pivotal factor
in our decision of going forward with that HP Agile Manager.
Gardner: So Rubina, not only are you progressing from waterfall to agile and adopting more up-
to-date tools, but you’ve made this leap to a SaaS-based delivery for this. If that's working out
well as you’ve said, do you think this is going to lead to doing more with other SaaS tools and
tests and capabilities and maybe even look at cloud platform as a service opportunity?
Ansari: Absolutely. This was our first experience and it is going very well. Of course, there were
some learning curves and some learning pains. Being able to get these changes so quickly and
not having it do it ourselves was kind of a mind shift change for us. We're reaping the benefits
from it obviously, but we did have to have a little more scheduled conversations, release notes,
and documentation about changes from HP.
We're not new to SaaS. We're also looking at offering some of our products in a SaaS model. So
we realize what's involved in it. It was great to be on the receiving end of a SaaS product,
knowing that TriZetto themselves are playing that space as well.
Gardner: Tell us what the future holds. Are you going to be adding any additional lifecycle
elements moving on this journey, as you've described it? What's next?

4. Ansari: There's always so much more to improve. What we’re looking for is how to quickly
respond to our customers? That means also integrating HP Service Manager and any other tools
that may be part of this software testing lifecycle or part of our ability to release or offer
something to our clients.
We'll continue doing this until there is no more space for efficiency. But, there are always places
where we can be even more effective.
Mobile development
Gardner: How about mobile development? Is that something that’s on your radar and that
you’ll be doing more of, given that devices are becoming more popular? I imagine that’s true of
your customers too?
Ansari: We've talked about it, but it's really not on our roadmap right now. It hasn't been one of
our main priorities.
Gardner: I suppose that you're in a good position to be able to move in that direction should you
decide to.
Ansari: Absolutely. There's no doubt. The technologies that we’re advancing towards as well
will allow us to easily go into the mobile space once we plan and do that.
Gardner: Well great. I'm afraid we’ll leave it there. We’ve been learning about how TriZetto has
been moving to a more agile methodology for its development and using a variety of HP
software products for Application Lifecycle Management.
So please join me in thanking our guest. We’ve been here with Rubina Ansari, the Associate Vice
President of Automation and Software Development Lifecycle Tools at TriZetto. Thank you.
Ansari: Thank you. The pleasure was all mine.
Gardner: And I'd also like to thank our audience as well for joining us for this special HP
Discover Performance Podcast coming to you from the HP Discover 2013 Conference in Las
Vegas.
I'm Dana Gardner. Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this ongoing series of
HP sponsored discussions. Thanks again for joining, and come back next time.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Sponsor: HP

5. Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on how a major healthcare software provider is using
HP tools to move from waterfall to agile. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2013. All
rights reserved.
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