Public Authority for Civil Information
Background
The State of Kuwait has an ever-changing, dynamic society which has different characteristics, including the huge
number of expatriate labor power coming from different nationalities, and the fast growth in population. This fact
led to the need of a system that could register and keep track of Kuwait's population and to control the different
variables in the society. Hence, State of Kuwait issued degree number 32/1982 regarding the establishment of the
Public Authority for Civil Information.
The Public Authority for Civil Information (PACI) has successfully implemented this system, which made the State
of Kuwait a pioneer in population registration. More importantly, this allowed the country to control the society
variables and build a huge and wealthy data bank. PACI is now able to provide this information to support decision
makers to make informed decisions to support national-level planning, and to provide a trusted, and reliable data
source for different government, and private organizations.
Business Needs & Challenges
PACI has a team of IT resources between analysts, developers and testers who work together to deliver custom
applications for the use of PACI. Currently, whenever tasked with delivering a custom application, this task is
handled by a single resource, who is responsible for analysis, design, development, testing, implementation and
support of this application. This hinders the development of custom applications and prevents PACI from releasing
mission-critical solutions to its business problems in a timely manner.
Characteristics of a viable solution
A viable solution should be at least capable of:
-
Streamline the process of DevOps and allow PACI to release mission-critical software
solutions in a shorter timeframe.
- Provide tools for analysts to gather the requirements efficiently and effectively.
-
Provide a platform for development team members to collaborate, communicate and share source code, analysis
documents and test results.
-
Provide manual and automated testing tools that would increase the reliability of software and reduce risks
of bugs and errors.
- Provide Project Managers and key sponsors with updated information about the progress of the project.
Solution
PACI selected Sharper Software's DevOps
Services, in addition to the SharperSkills Azure DevOps Training in order
to establish a culture of DevOps at PACI. Starting as early as the Requirement
Gathering stage, up-to and continuously improving Release Management, PACI selected the Agile DevOps Process as the
Process Template of Choice.
Development Team Skills Assessment
Sharper Software met with the members of the Development Team and performed one-to-one interviews to arrive at
the current skills of the team. Sharper Software delivered a report to PACI's Management, showing
the gaps in the required skill-set and the suggested assignment of roles and responsibilities. This approach helped
beat the one-resource-per-project challenge.
The Microsoft DevOps Platform
Sharper Software installed and configured Team Foundation Server on a server platform, as well as Visual Studio
on every development team member's computer. Development Team member computers were configured to connect to and
use Team Foundation Server. This provided the Development Team members with the latest and coolest tools necessary
to perform their jobs with high productivity.
SharperSkills® Training
The Development Team attended the SharperSkills®Azure DevOps
Hands-On Training to learn how to use Azure DevOps as the DevOps platform. Using a Virtual Machine,
the team acquired a practical knowledge of the features and capabilities of Azure DevOps, without the bore, hassle and
theoretical approach of traditional training. Now, the PACI team is ready to use Azure DevOps for everyday
DevOps.
