Client

Visioneer (http://www.visioneer.com/index.html) is a global leading Intelligent Imaging solution provider. Its product line includes a wide variety of scanner equipment, scanning software, image processing and document imaging management software. With the fast development of the scanner and imaging software market, the marketplace has become much more competitive. Visineer needs to constantly release scanner products of various types, sizes and functions to the market and provide customers with more compatible imaging management software with a friendlier User Interface. With its "closely combining software and hardware and frequent release of multiple level products" strategy, Visioneer has gained a leading position in the market.

Challenge

In May 2005, Visioneer was planning to release multiple scanner products in the next four months and promote its flagship imaging software One Touch. Because of the complexity of this technology and the tight schedule, Visioneer found it hard to release the products on time only relying on their own engineering team. Because of limited human resources, to meet their schedule Visioneer decided to use the ODC (ODC: Offshore Development Center) established by ExperExchange in China. This ODC would provide long-term services including research, development, maintenance and product promotion. The first goal of this cooperation was to develop the complete software suite for the XP300 Duplex Sheetfed Color Scanner within 4 months and release the product in September.

Solution

ExperExchange and Visioneer had a thorough discussion on the objectives and various operational issues for the ODC, and formed a plan. The following challenges were also identified:

1. Complex Products: As Visineer is constantly releasing new hardware and software products, the scanner drivers require frequent updates and the relationship between different product modules becomes more and more complex, resulting in difficulties in development and maintenance work. Even though most engineers were kept busy with technical support and product maintenance, unexpected errors occurred again and again. The ODC must understand the complex relationship between these products and modules to resolve this issue.
2. Onshore and Offshore Communication: Any development work must be done by ExperExchange ODC and Visioneer's US team together. It is necessary to maintain frequent communication and close cooperation between the two parties to guarantee quality products.
3. Development Environment: In general, the two parties encountered differences in culture, customs, habits and standards, which bring some difficulties to the product development. They must pay attention and make efforts to overcome these difficulties during the early stages of cooperation.

ExperExchange selected and set up the development team and QA team, choosing team managers who have extensive experience with US projects. The following onshore-offshore software process management methodology was developed:

1. Virtual integration of the Visioneer and ExperExchange engineering environments:

   • At the start, ExperExchange's senior engineers had a three-day face-to-face discussion with the Visioneer team, and acquainted themselves with Visioneer's development environment, process and requirements.
   • ExperExchange replicated the development environment at Visioneer, including the development tools, source control software, testing tools, environment and data, etc. Any changes must be agreed upon by the two parties to maintain a consistency in the cross-sea product development environment.
   • ExperExchange engineers at the ODC also adopted Visioneer's coding style and other standards to unify product code and document formats.



2. Reliable onshore-offshore communication:

   To assure reliable communication between the two parties, the teams employed the various communication and collaboration methods stated below:

   

   • Development engineers at the ODC sent daily reports to Visioneer's project manager; the reports included information concerning the working status, problems and issues, and the plan for the next day.
   • Utilizing a Web-based Bug Tracking System, both sides’ QA engineers exchanged daily records and bug reports, then forwarded the bug reports to the proper developers to fix any bugs and perform verification.
   • Overseas phone conferences were frequently held, being an effective and direct way of communication. Before such a meeting, all the attendants would be given the agenda to enable them to prepare, and afterwards the meeting summery would be circulated among them to assure mutual understanding of the issues and solutions.
   • During the release phase, the ODC team worked at night in order to cooperate with Visioneer's day-time team, and the immediate communication made the final phase extremely effective.
   • ExperExchange also assigned an onshore project manager to take Visioneer's comments and coordinate ODC operation immediately.



3. Periodical assessment: ExperExchange conducted periodic assessments of the ODC operations, listening to Visioneer's comments to improve the environment and the process.

4. Long-term maintenance: After the product was released, the ODC engineers continued maintenance work and provided support to Visioneer's teams. Both parties collected customer feedback to help with product improvement for the next version.

Engineering Highlights

ExperExchange engineers at the ODC made the following outstanding contributions:

1. R&D aspect: With extensive R&D experience in the imaging field and strong engineering strength, the ODC team developed many arithmetic modules, including Auto Crop, Auto Straighten, etc. These modules out-performed the competitor's product, making Visioneer very happy.
2. Quality aspect: After an investigation of Visioneer's testing methods to identify the strengths of the two parties, the QA team composed a new testing plan, designed the Test Case/Test Matrix and developed hundreds of auto-test scripts. This significantly reduced the amount of testing needed, improving the entire testing process.

Benefits

With efforts from the two parties, ExperExchange ODC and Visioneer accomplished the development work and released the new product to the global market in September 2005. The analysis has revealed that the ExperExchange ODC reduced the cost to develop the new product by 70%, which was made possible only with Visioneer's existing resources.

Since September 2005, the ExperExchange ODC has been providing long term service such as product upgrades, maintenance and technical support for Visioneer, generating more and more client benefits.

Technologies

Programming Language: C++

Development Tools:

• Visual Studio .Net 2003
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Driver Development Kit (DDK)
• Windows Template Library 7.1

Bug Tracking Tools: PVCS Tracker I-Net

Configuration Management Tools: Source Offsite