ABOUT BOURSORAMA
Launched in 1995, the Boursorama group’s growth strategy has been based on innovation, simplicity and transparency. Originally an online broker and portal for economic and financial news, the Boursorama group launched an online bank in 2006. Today Boursorama is France’s leading online bank, with 757,000 customers at the end of 2015, while its portal www.boursorama.com is the top national site for economic and financial news. With 810 employees. Boursorama also provides services in Germany and Spain.
MODERNISING COOPERATION IN THE DEVELOPMENT AND SUPPORT TEAMS
Like many firms, Boursorama’s first experience of using Atlassian products was with Jira. It was the IT team that suggested identifying a unified tool to replace the various solutions that sat alongside each other internally. With MANTIS for managing bug tracking and an in-house solution for tracking feedback from the development team, information was scattered. and cooperation complicated and difficult to track. The lack of a management tool for test logs was also problematic, and the need for a unified and more comprehensive tool had become urgent.
There were few options available that were up to the job and Atlassian’s solution quickly stood out. One of Jira’s contenders was the higher version of the existing Mantis solution, but a free test of Jira won over the team in just a few days.
Portfolio/Project Management Officer Chi Sang Tuong explains that Jira’s reputation was a reassuring and decisive advantage:
”Jira’s excellent reputation prompted us to test it, and certainly speeded up the decision-making process.”
It was Jira’s ease of use that finally convinced the team: the feeling among users after the test was both positive and unanimous.
The benefits within the IT department quickly became apparent. Jira was initially used to optimize bug tracking uniformly between teams, and then to manage test logs. Given the solution’s ease of use and the potential, project management was integrated into the software. Chi Sang explains that its usefulness among project managers is now well established:
”Jira helps project managers to manage better by sharing lists of actions and managing change requests.”
THE SNOWBALL EFFECT, AND MOTIVATING BUSINESS TEAMS
After a few months of use in the IT department, the business teams most open to innovation and most curious – infographics and marketing – were keen to try Jira. Chi Sang explains that ”they entered the world of Jira by managing their projects’ acceptance logs. The business teams heard how successful Jira was in the IT department and were keen to test the solution for themselves.”
Very soon, they wanted to manage all their project cooperation, processes and requests in Jira.
”Users realized that the tool was very user-friendly and became aware of how far they could go in organising themselves more effectively. The Agile views are really very intuitive. Thanks to Jira, teams can formalize all the phases of a project based on one very clear, user-friendly overview” explains Chi Sang.
The success of collaborative working with Jira produced a snowball effect and attracted interest from more departments. Today, almost 500 users are working with the software. Employees who hadn’t used computerized tools for collaborative working previously sum up the benefits as follows:
- They have been able to organize themselves better – previously they were limited by e-mail, which they found time-consuming.
- Jira’s user-friendliness meant it was instantly adopted by employees, even those who were less well versed in using software. «They took it on board immediately» confirms Chi Sang.
- By offering a clear overview of actions, who is responsible for each and how far they have progressed, departments are better placed to quantify workload by individual project. It also means they are able to allocate staff as accurately as possible.
The IT department has been the first to experience the qualitative benefits of Jira.
As Chi Sang explains, ”It offers us a real level of reassurance. We’re no longer constantly asking ourselves, “Where did I get to?”; or “What do I need to do?”. Jira makes our day-to-day lives easier”.
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VALIANTYS’ EXPERTISE AND ITS SUPPORT FOR THE NEXT STEP
After 18 months of using and configuring Jira independently, Boursorama thought to personalize the solution to align it more closely with business needs. To do this, the team turned to Valiantys for its expertise in Atlassian products.
Chi Sang’s team, which had seen changes in the scope of Jira’s use from bug tracking to business collaboration, as well as the implementation of Confluence and Bamboo, needed support to confirm the choices it was making – and turn its ambitions into reality.
Valiantys’ expertise in Atlassian products made all the difference, compared with the general skills of the IT partner Boursorama had initially used for the project. Chi Sang explains:
”Valiantys’ ability to implement various Jira add-ons and its extensive knowledge of the entire Atlassian ecosystem were very valuable for our in-house projects. The Valiantys team reassured us about our choices, provided us with practical expertise and suggested solutions we hadn’t considered.”
Chi Sang highlights a number of aspects of his relationship with Valiantys:
- Adaptability: «Valiantys adapted very quickly to our information system and the Jira installation we already had in place.»
- Creativity: «Thanks to its expertise in Atlassian products, the team is proactive in putting forward proposals and finding solutions that address the issues we face.»
- Experience: «After managing a large number of Jira projects, their consultants not only know what to do, but also what not to do. They shared best practices with us, which saved us a lot of time. At the beginning of the project, for example, they confirmed that we were moving in the right direction. A lot of their advice focused on simplifying our workflows or reducing the number of screens for increased user-friendliness and easier administration.»
- Sharing: «I really enjoyed taking part in Valiantys’ Enterprise Day in 2015. The event is an opportunity to meet colleagues and share Jira advice and experiences in an informal setting.»