CASE STUDY: Release automation for a UK bank

CONTENTS

Background

Our client, the Royal Bank of Scotland, was performing more than 200 manual releases for its mission-critical payment system each year. The number of releases that could be performed had reached crisis point and the application team was struggling to keep up with the delivery requirements.

The key issues were:

Error-prone releases, causing frequent unexpected implementation issues and low confidence of release success
Time-consuming release activity, requiring two full-time employees for four hours on average
Implementation planning was laborious and typically meetings involved 10 operations staff/developers
It was very difficult to test defects and recreate issues due to lack of knowledge/confidence in deployed artefacts
Roll backs and patches were not reliable failback options, and these were not tested

Summary

From 3 to 1 FTE required per release
4 hours to ½ hour average time to release
High confidence releases with reliable failback options

Delivering for the Client

The solution

Sandhata delivered an end-to-end release framework incorporating automation scripts, release process and best practice. The automation of manual tasks, in addition to integration with the existing process, facilitated fast adoption.

Client Implementation

The result

The new release automation framework revolutionised project delivery, reducing the average time taken for a release from four hours to 30 minutes. Developers and operations staff were released from the manual steps and verification previously required, which meant that less time was wasted in addition to eradicating manual errors.

Visibility into versions of deployed assets meant that components could be replicated and tested quickly with high confidence. Roll-backs were tested as standard for every release, improving application reliability and availability.

The team

Sandhata’s automation experts introduced an end-to-end release automation process and collaborated with the bank’s team to integrate this with the existing application lifecycle. Sandhata’s team was able to use its extensive knowledge and experience of automation to deliver a significant change in a short period of time without compromising quality.