Novarra Confident in AccuRev Services Team
“We save huge amounts of time with AccuRev. Overall, AccuRev has improved our operations greatly.”
Customer Profile
Novarra, the Internet Mobility Company, provides a high performance mobile internet product suite for operators and content providers to create new web-based services and revenue streams. Novarra's patented architecture for web content transformation and network optimization is open standards-based and designed for mass-market, high volume mobile consumer deployments. The solution delivers a high quality mobile user experience for services including full rich web, search, widgets, premium portals, personalization, video and advertising as well as support for mobile sites. Global, commercial deployments over 7 years on both 2.5G and 3G networks have proven consumer satisfaction, uptake and increased data services revenues.
Background
Novarra used PVCS as their version control tool for eight years. The 65-member development team was familiar with its features and functions, and a great deal of code resided within Novarra’s PVCS workspace. But when Novarra assessed the overall functionality of their version control system, PVCS fell short in meeting the company’s demands.
Specifically, Novarra needed a solution that could perform faster and more simply for both their local development team in Illinois as well as for off-site developers working from their homes. They also wanted a solution from a company that would provide technical services to guide Novarra in the right direction and not bring down development during the transition process.
After a comprehensive review of the available tools in the market, the management team at Novarra chose AccuRev to replace PVCS. AccuRev’s software configuration management (SCM) solution delivered many of the changes Novarra sought from a new tool. The AccuRev implementation resulted in a much faster release time, up to 20% on some projects; satisfied the needs of their geographically dispersed teams; and greatly simplified the software development process. Within just two weeks, AccuRev was deployed and Novarra had received the necessary technical and training services to succeed.
The AccuRev services team led Novarra’s transition from PVCS to AccuRev. Services included implementing AccuRev software and providing multiple training sessions to teach and even excite developers about their new SCM tool.
Rolling Out AccuRev
Novarra participated in the Silver Success Implementation Plan (Silver SIP), chose one developer to enter the AccuRev Certified Engineer (ACE) training program, and opted for both classroom and online user training for all other developers.
The Silver Success Implementation Program positively impacted the early stages of AccuRev adoption. Services included within the Silver SIP were catered specifically to Novarra’s development needs, geographic distribution and software development team size. A consultation with the AccuRev services team was set up in order to better establish implementation requirements, finalize a rollout plan and develop an internal support infrastructure.
Team consulting between AccuRev senior trainers and the Novarra team followed, and here developers learned about the functionality and applications relevant to their environment. Weekly status calls and a session of extra classroom training were also conducted to ensure a smooth transition into the early operation phase.
Currently, Novarra has a single AccuRev administrator, who successfully completed the two-day AccuRev Certified Engineer (ACE) course. Here he learned the aspects of using, managing and deploying AccuRev software as well as how to garner a rapid return on investment. “The AccuRev training process was central to our transition. Trainers had extensive knowledge and enthusiasm about their product, which in turn made learning easier,” said Jeff Serviss, manager of SCM at Novarra. “I had no problems throughout ACE training and found AccuRev easy to use and simple to administrate.”
The services team at AccuRev provided Novarra’s off-site developers with online user training, an on-demand tutorial designed to demonstrate AccuRev’s functions via the Web. Novarra developers were able to view tutorials at their own pace and from their own computers, no travel necessary. Given the flexible nature of the tutorial, online user training was a great option in helping Novarra’s off-site developers learn and understand the AccuRev process.
With the instruction of AccuRev’s services team, Novarra completed training sessions and fully deployed AccuRev’s software within two weeks. This transition to AccuRev exceeded Novarra’s expectations as there was no real downtime, and training sessions left developers feeling confident in the abilities of their new tool. Novarra was able to turn their software development projects over from PVCS to AccuRev while maintaining a consistent level of productivity.
Management directed that Novarra’s development process not be interrupted during the transition to new software, and AccuRev met this requirement. Novarra considered AccuRev’s services team essential to successfully deploying AccuRev so quickly. “The team’s training sessions not only helped with the transition, but gave developers an eagerness to use the product once we made the transition,” said Serviss. “We were completely transitioned to AccuRev in only two weeks and haven’t had a hitch since.” Jeff and his developers now use AccuRev daily for all their software configuration management tasks. The team has experienced many positive changes since the AccuRev implementation.
Real Results
Switching to AccuRev has greatly impacted Novarra’s release time. From pulling code down to pulling in changes, they are able to turn projects around much faster.
Novarra’s one AccuRev administrator supports 65 developers. He reports that supporting installations and administering AccuRev requires less than one hour a day and describes AccuRev as a “self-running tool.” This benefit allows more time to be spent on managing release engineering and builds, a contributing factor to a considerable productivity improvement in their software development process since implementing AccuRev.
Because of AccuRev’s flexibility and optimization for Novarra’s build and release cycle, the team is much more productive than with PVCS. Developers report that the time taken to perform certain operations has decreased by as much as 50 percent; a task that used to require 15 minutes to update code now takes about one minute. Time-saving capability is just one major improvement described as a result of implementing AccuRev.
If a question arises within the Novarra development team that requires an answer from AccuRev, they know AccuRev’s services team will respond immediately. Jeff Serviss has even recommended AccuRev’s services team to other AccuRev customers. His experiences with AccuRev’s implementation, training and product have exceeded expectations. “We save huge amounts of time with AccuRev. Overall, AccuRev has improved our operations greatly.”
