Open Source

The LetterSketch module is a combination of Eclipse, Open Office and self-developed code. We have taken strong measures to avoid Open Source contamination. DLA Piper performed an audit on the code to validate this contamination.

Scrum

LetterGen is developed using the Scrum methodology. The advantage of this methodology is the usage of sprints. Thanks to these sprints, we can divide the development work in manageable parts, avoiding big bang releases.

Offshore development

For the development, we work with two offshore partners. ValueSource is a KBC subsidiary company in Chennai, India. They are specialized in developing both Java and .NET using the Scrum methodology.

Quality Software in Rio, Brazil is a well-known offshore testing specialist. The manager of the testing division, Ricardo Cristalli, is vice-president of the Latin American Testing Association and therefore a reference for testing organizations.

By using the Scrum methodology, we manage requirement process until delivery and al this on time and within budget.

The following picture shows the workflow of the development process. At ValueSource, we currently have one team leader and four active developers. At Quality Software, we have one senior test consultant to write the test scenarios and two testers to carry out the scenarios and to perform regression tests.

At BTR, we have one project leader and one functional analyst writing the requirements and coordinating the test results. Another person manages the sources and various environments. One architect develops new evolutions and prototypes for new functionalities. We have one team leader and two junior developers responsible for customer support.

Development efforts

Since 1998, a team of at least 6 developers has been writing and enhancing the codebase. For the period before the launch of BTR Services, this corresponds to 48 man-years.

Since the start of BTR , we made the following efforts:

Roadmap

We constantly improve the product by considering prospect and customer feedback. We also look at the evolutions at the competition to make sure that our product remains competitive. A detailed roadmap can be found in annex.

The LetterData product (previously known as the interactive environment of VarE-Docs) is totally rewritten based on the standards used in the LetterGen product. For this major development, we asked for financial support from the IWT. One of the challenges was the virtualization of BPM solutions like IBM WebSphere Process Server, Oracle BPEL and RedHat jBPM, so that the workflow definition can be done in LetterData, without any knowledge of these environments.

In the same development effort a module was added in LetterSketch to generate eForms based on HTML5.