StarBucks

TDS had been contracted by Starbucks to implement product pipeline management application. Starbucks is designing and selling multiple food and beverage products and a number of people participate in the process of bringing each new product to market. Participation of each individual specialist varies by functional areas and ranges from initial product idea brainstorming, to marketing, to sales volume predictions to final product formula and specification creation and sign-off.

To address the process most closely TDS has created simple to use, standardized applications for different product lines which allow to track each individual product through the creation process, collaborate on product features and work items and provide a way to search and analyze library of existing products.

Challenges.

Main challenge was to guide this client in to the correct technology as well as in to correct representation of the current business process and additional efficiencies this new application was envisioned to introduce. It was achieved by taking a technology-agnostic high level view of the problem, introducing a few alternative implementations and providing explanation on how one or the other set of features would benefit the final solution. The technology to implement the solution was chosen last therefore not obstructing the view on the problem and not enforcing limitations early on in the process.

Lessons Learned

Working with business-savvy but non-technical clients on budgeted projects always anticipate for design shifts and estimate these as part of the original budget, not as change requests. In many cases it would be easier for these clients to get the higher maximum budget approved initially than to go back and approve additional budget for change requests. Always provide Plan-B alternative solution. Sharepoint / Dynamics would have been a perfect solution for the project but budgetary constraints, lack of technology penetration in the company and other factors forced reduced scope custom solution.