Competency center set up. Theory and Practice

1. Competency center set up.
Theory and Practice
Alexander Marmuzevich

2. Key points in the theory of
dedicated competence centers set up
Bank is not an IT-company.
Bank manages money.
IT provides toolset for the mentioned above activity.
Bank is good at exploiting software but Bank does not
have to know how this software works inside.
There are a lot of varied software which should be
integrated with each other.
Software becomes outdated and needs updates or
replacement without interrupting the main processes.

3. Levels of system support and maintenance
Level 1 - Helpdesk
Bank is in charge, but it is possible to perform at a competence center.
24/7 support. Can be transferred to perform at Call-Centre. In terms of ST Group
infrastructure – Marco LLC.
Level 2 –High performance of maintenance and support activities
Bank is in charge. Shall not be given out to 3rd parties due to the need of access
to production environments.
Level 3 – Identification and resolution causes of incidents, system development,
integration. Ideal for outsourcing to the outer competence center.
In terms ST Group - Rond.

4. Competence center performed activities:
• Deployment
• Setup of development environments
• Source Code takeover
• Third-level Support
• Information about system performance algorithms
• Analysis of new requirements
• Analysis of issues in the code
• Bug fixing, DataFixing
• Development
• Development new functionality for systems are not supported by
developer
• Integration activities
• Development of interfaces
• Integration with existing systems
• Integration with the new systems
• Migration
• Data migration
• Platform upgrade

5. Overview of a supported system
Software - Bankmaster Retail Solution (Misys).
Development - 1990. In operation since 2004.
Cobol + C + Oracle (Embedded SQL). HP-UX + Tuxedo.
3-tier architecture, designed for high loaded systems (more than 3 million
customer accounts).
Front & Back office.
Features: Work with individual clients, accounts, loans, fixed deposits,
standing orders.
The volume of documentation: more than 400 mb.
The volume of the source code:
• Database: 5 circuits, about 500 tables and other objects
• Cobol modules: ~ 100 mb source, ~ 7000 units
• C modules: ~ 30 mb source, ~ 3000 units

6. A brief description of the BMCC structure
Dedicated environment of Competency Center. Operated by the
bank. Access - Remote (VPN + RDP).
Source code management – bank’s responsibility .
Team
• Architects - 2
• Developers - 4
• Business Intelligence - 2
• Testers – 3
Stages of BMCC development:
• Traininngs
• Knowledge take over and recompilation of the system
• Development projects
• Providing support

7. Examples of the implemented projects
New Functionality
• Loan Redemption - massive loan repayments when they are sold to
collection agencies
Integration
• Integration with CrediLogic (scoring system)
• BMRS API - publication of API for online-call functions of Bankmaster from
third-part applications
Tasks of migration
• Migration from Oracle 8i to Oracle 10g
• Data transfer from Midas in Bankmaster RS
• Replacement BASS to FrontEnd
Bugfixing
• Deadlocks fixing
• Online-modules performance optimization
• Solving problems related to interest charge when the interest rates are
changed retroactively

8. Definition of legacy-systems
Exotic programming languages
Old technology, debug difficulty or inability.
Issues with support and licensing absence in the market (components, compilers,
databases).
The absence of a complete system documentation.
A number of additional undocumented modifications.
The absence of people who have written it all .
It is difficult to assess the impact of new enhancements to the system.
How to restrain in legacy-system?

9. Knowledge of the system
All knowledge of the system is in the system (source code)!
The knowledge should be extracted, retained, transfered.
How this can be done?
Extract knowledge from the source
code with help of
specialized software.

10. Knowledge Management
ROND developed a toolset (RDCA) to solve the issues of knowledge
management.
Key features that were implemented:
• Formation of AST for all source code
• Detection of hidden errors
• Visualization of direct and indirect connections between the system
modules
• Cataloging and indexing of the source code.
• Extraction of operation algorithms of system components directly from
source codes.

11. Conclusion
Dedicated competence center set up allows to:
• Get rid of not peculiar functions for a bank.
• Consolidate and save knowledge of the operating
systems.
• Reduce costs and risks to support the exploited systems
and, in particular, systems that had been removed from
support.
• Simplify migration on other systems and platforms.
ROND company invites you to mutually beneficial and
long-term cooperation.

12. Thank you!
ROND
Banking Competence Center
1/1, Academician Kuprevich
street, 220141, Minsk, Belarus
tel. / fax: +375 17 210-29-00
info@rond.by
www.rond.by