Kaspersky Lab actively applies the solution of project management

For ensuring effective management of development and quality control of software of Kaspersky Lab it was required to implement the unified solution instead of the numerous separate means and methodologies used by development teams and testers.

Task

To conform to the highest customer requirements and to provide them reliable protection against all types of Internet threats, the number of employees were necessary to increase the companies and to expand a circle of problems of a command. First of all, it concerned department of researches and development – for several years the number of the developers, testers and other employees working on creation of new products grew almost to 900 people.

Each development team has own management tools development that strongly complicates information transfer, for example about the fulfilled requirements, between commands.

On the solution of standard tasks too much time left.

The management of Kaspersky Lab made the decision on a project startup on creation of uniform development process using the unified software development platform of Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010.

Solution

Implementing solution took place in several stages. The pilot project is tested in the infrastructure direction of department of development, and then gradual connection of other commands began. Main advantage of the new platform – the automated end-to-end trace in projects and between them. Earlier on search of the fulfilled requirements could leave till several o'clock and efforts of almost all command were required. Now this operation is performed by one person literally for 3-4 mouse clicks and on all process no more than 20 minutes leave.

It was originally going to implement Team Foundation Server only for developers, and to provide to testers other tools. However calculation of cost of ownership in the long term showed that implementation of TFS for both categories of users will cost much cheaper.

The pilot project on implementation of TFS was started in 2011 in the infrastructure direction of department of development and researches. Half a year left on project planning, and by January, 2012 implementation was fully completed. The infrastructure department was selected not accidentally – that command which was engaged in implementation of TFS, had an opportunity to test it on the tasks, such as project planning, requirements management, quality and resources of projects.

In the current version of Team Foundation Server 2010 testing aids were considerably improved and ensuring quality of the software is and served for Kaspersky Lab as the main criterion when choosing the solution.

Results and advantages

As a result of implementation of a new solution Kaspersky Lab received the integrated and unified platform of development. Using the automated means of operating control and work planning within iterations it was succeeded to increase performance of development teams considerably. Now all developments are completely documented and managed. Interrelations between projects became more obvious and transparent. Besides, the solution of Microsoft allowed to overcome problems of trace of requirements between projects. As a result of implementation of Team Foundation Server the company received the automated end-to-end trace both in projects, and between them.

Opinion

"We selected Team Foundation Server 2010 because it is the only integrated unified platform of team software development supporting all modern methodologies", - Boris Klimov, the project manager of implementation Microsoft Team Foundation Server noted.