Setting new standards for collaborative offshore Agile development, ThoughtWorks helped the UK’s leading independent retailer of online train tickets – thetrainline.com – rebuild its core processing and website platform. In what has now become one of the largest known Agile projects, a distributed team of approximately 200 people delivered a Web 2.0 solution supporting 8.6 million registered users, with speed that was fundamental to thetrainline.com’s success in a rapidly evolving market.

1. A platform for the future
Setting new standards for collaborative offshore Agile development, ThoughtWorks helped the UK’s leading
independent retailer of online train tickets – thetrainline.com – rebuild its core processing and website platform.
In what has now become one of the largest known Agile projects, a distributed team of approximately 200
people delivered a Web 2.0 solution supporting 8.6 million registered users, with speed that was fundamental
to thetrainline.com’s success in a rapidly evolving market.
thetrainline.com was established in 1997 and is the UK’s leading It introduced many innovative product and service ideas including
independent retailer of train tickets online. Since its inception, ticketing at home and on mobile phones. The recent acquisition
thetrainline.com has made millions of transactions and the of Advanced Smartcard Technologies and ECEBS Ltd signaled its
company’s websites and call-centers account for the sale of desire to drive the adoption of the smartcard technology throughout
approximately 18% of the UK’s train tickets in terms of value. the travel industry.
In addition to its own website it operates retail websites for a In a highly competitive environment, thetrainline.com also felt
number of Train Operating Companies which sell rail tickets online, the need to take advantage of new market opportunities and
as well as providing a rail business travel service direct to a number system operational cost savings for which a whole new platform
of blue chip corporations and travel agents. was required.
The Situation The new platform was designed for low maintenance costs, short
During its first 8 years in the market, thetrainline.com enjoyed a delivery time of new features and opportunities for significantly
first mover advantage and expanded significantly, acquiring its consolidating the hardware platform with the services.
main online competitor Qjump in February 2004. thetrainline.com
developed a powerful range of ticketing systems, which includes
“We undertook a complex, technically challenging and
a core customer management and booking engine, a range of
business critical programme of work with ThoughtWorks.
ticket collection kiosks and printers for corporate customers.
We trusted them with the success of our future business
and they delivered.”
David Jack – CIO thetrainline.com
www.thoughtworks.com

2. The Challenge
The challenge thetrainline.com faced at the beginning of the year,
was the need to move away from a huge monolithic system and
legacy codebase to enable it to deliver value to their customers in
much shorter timescales, with reduced cost and increased scale.
The key challenges included:
Scaling a team from 50 people to approximately 200 people.
Fundamentally re-architecting a huge legacy code-base that
had been developed over many years, to enable running
multiple tracks of development at the same time.
Production environments were simulated to enable real-time
Keeping key business customers happy while the new integration and testing of software modules under development.
platform was developed. Virtualization was used extensively, while hosting the application
and development infrastructure on close to 300 servers.
Working Towards a Solution
ThoughtWorks’ approach to the challenge ahead lay in a phased Software build and deployment processes were automated so that
architectural re-factoring approach. The system evolved over a the team could manage several versions of the software efficiently.
period of time, in a way that ensured maximum productivity and
scalability. An automated regression test framework created a safeguard
around the software, rapidly identifying faults and ensuring the
The first step was to build a shared understanding of the problem highest levels of quality across the application. This also allowed the
and required solution. Interactive exercises, discussions and quick application to scale rapidly and handle massive increases in traffic.
prototype development fed into the project roadmap, identifying
areas of technical risk and developing mitigation plans. Software development was completed in small iterations, tackling
the most important, high risk or troublesome areas first. Every two
A well-defined governance model, clearly identifying sponsors weeks, functionality was “showcased” to the customer to review
and owners on either side enabled collaborative decision-making and re-prioritize work for the next iteration.
and prioritization by key stakeholders.
ThoughtWorks also planned for six-week “Release” cycles,
Dedicated video-conferencing, use of WebEx and Instant each cycle comprising three iterations, until production.
Messenger and regular visits by ThoughtWorks and
thetrainline.com staff between Bangalore, Pune and the
UK ensured open and frequent communication.
www.thoughtworks.com

3. Client Benefits The Future:
Quality at speed: ThoughtWorks produced a production-ready, thetrainline.com had a business critical, technically complex
live, scalable and functionally rich application in less than nine problem that was threatening to restrain them in a highly competitive
months. At the same time, ThoughtWorks continued to deliver market. After working with ThoughtWorks, thetrainline.com now has
and deploy new features and functionality every six weeks a stable, scalable system that provides the rich user functionality it
into production. wanted to offer.
Shorter, simpler booking process: Users now have to Nine of the 15 Train Operating Companies’ portals powered by
navigate fewer pages to make a booking, saving valuable time. thetrainline.com are live on the new system. Roll out to the other
The average visit to the site now contains 46% less page views Train Operating Companies is continuing. In addition, the platform
than the old site, and the average duration to make a purchase will be extended to portals for businesses, travel management
is around 60% of the time previously required. companies and call centers.
Supporting innovation: ThoughtWorks architected and thetrainline.com is well on track to be able to decommission
developed a proprietary portal platform enabling the rapid roll its existing platform, and so make cost savings as well as go
out of multiple customer portals with significantly improved after new business opportunities. More importantly, it now has
functional brand and product differences. a platform which can underpin the constant innovation that
thetrainline.com is committed to deliver to its current and
Safe: The application now has a full set of automated tests, future customers.
which ensure that the highest levels of quality are maintained,
and allows new features to be added rapidly without breaking
the production system.
Total collaboration: Despite the distance, thetrainline.com
and ThoughtWorks worked in a highly collaborative way, building
close relationships and understanding, setting new standards
for offshore software development teams.
“thetrainline.com has extensive offshore software development
experience with a number of different vendors. If you have a
business critical, technically complex development project
you want to offshore, in my view, ThoughtWorks is the safest
option. They are redefining offshore software development
and I wholeheartedly endorse their approach.”
Rob Parkinson – IT Director thetrainline.com
www.thoughtworks.com

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