Development of an electronic document management system from the inside: How we prepare SED TEZIS for release

Document management and business process automation systems are designed to bring order to the company. They systematize the documentation support of the company and lay out clear, direct, invariable routes along which work on documents moves. Thus, the workflow system organizes chaos and anarchy in the daily affairs of the company, gives it a certain pace and schedule of activities.

But in order to create a tool that can systematize and organize something, you must first learn to systematize and organize your affairs yourself. For us the main thing is the development of the document circulation system TEZIS. Therefore, it is not surprising that the work on each new release of the system also moves along a clear route - like the work on any document in our EDS.

In this article, we want to briefly let the reader into the internal kitchen of developing a workflow system. We will tell about the stages of preparation for the release of SED TEZIS and show how the work on the new versions is built. Perhaps our organizational experience will be useful to someone.

Stages of development of a new version of SED Tezis

The new version of SED TEZIS is released once a year. We celebrate the birthday of each release in the fall, usually in late September and early October. However, the preparation for the release of a new version of the system begins in the deep winter, when a schedule of work on the release is drawn up.
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Every year a publicly available document is formed for the entire TEZIS project - the release schedule, which details the stages of work on the new version of the system. We have four of them:

• Preparation for development;
• Development of new features of the system;
• Preparing for the release of a new release;
• Release Release.

Each stage includes numerous intermediate stages, which are also recorded in the schedule. In addition, it spells out the time by which one or another intermediate stage should be completed.

As a rule, preparation for development goes in March-April; development takes time from May to August; Preparations for release are in August-September, and in October there is a release, after which until November the new version is installed with customers. By the beginning of November, the latest versions of TEZIS are also coming out : the Portal , the United Holding module, the Mobile version of the system and other branches of the TEZIS system.

Preparation for the development of SED: a sieve for ideas

Until the beginning of March, a general concept of product development for the year of release is developed, a preliminary collection of ideas, suggestions and comments is carried out.

On March 1, a document is created to collect proposals for a new release and until mid-March ideas generated for the development of an electronic document management system generated over the winter will be submitted to it. The following participants make suggestions to the document:

• Head of Electronic Document Management.
• Managers of individual projects implementation TEZIS. They bring to the document ideas and comments that were born in the course of real work on projects of already existing clients.
• Director of Sales. It consolidates ideas from all sales staff based on the requirements of customers that were negotiated with the implementation of the system.
• Head of Technical Support. He enters into the document the ideas formed by his department based on the wishes of customers.
• Head of Testing. Makes the document noticed system errors that occurred in the previous version.
• Head of Development. Contributes to the document proposals from the developers.
• Head of marketing department. Introduces ideas arising from current trends in the SED market to the document, design ideas, interface usability.
• Business analyst. Introduces ideas into the document arising on the basis of information accumulated over the year about new technological capabilities, changes in competitors, changes in legislation regarding the requirements for the EDS.

After the document is filled, the selection of ideas begins. The proposals pass through the "sieve" - ​​two expert councils, one of which passes in the middle of March, and the second - in the middle of April.

The Expert Council includes the Head of Electronic Document Management, the Director of Sales, the Head of the Technical Support Department, the Head of the Testing Department, the Head of the Development Department, the Business Analyst and the Head of the Marketing Department.

At the first expert council, a preliminary pool of improvements is formed. The expert council discusses each item of the document to collect proposals: something is immediately discarded, something is immediately accepted, something is accepted with the condition of preliminary analysis - is it necessary and will it work?

This meeting is a real war of opinions. Disputes are conducted hot, each participant, as a lawyer, defends the changes that his department proposes. Developers are fighting for what is technically feasible, project managers - for the interests of their clients-clients, technical support - for those complaints that have gotten the most, and the sales department - for the proposals with which they are most often showered by potential customers. It happens that the discussion is stretched for a whole day, which experts spend without leaving the meeting room.

“It happens that you make changes, but you cannot defend them at the expert council. When I met the system, I immediately suggested renaming the names of “Application Folders” and “Search Folders” —it sounds incomprehensible. And each time it was not possible to defend their point of view - such as such a trifle, one is not clear to you. Only this year, customers confirmed my point of view. We held a competition among employees, proposals for renaming were received, and the “Application Folders” were finally renamed into “Action Folders”. It seems to be nonsense, but in fact - an important point in the UI system. Imagine now what the battles were when we discussed the redesign of the whole system, ”says Lyudmila Knyazeva, head of the marketing department, member of the annual expert council.


Those “application folders”. Users see them for the last time.

Until mid-April, the need for all the controversial points on the list becomes clear. The business analyst prepares analytical notes, the head of the technical support department with employees conducts a survey of customers - do they need such system capabilities; the head of the development department conducts Research & Development (R & D) in the search for technical possibilities for implementing controversial ideas.

In mid-April, the second expert council is held. It discusses the results of analysis, customer surveys and R & D, and forms the final pool of tasks for developers. Tasks are divided into groups, their resource intensity and priority is determined.

At this stage, economic issues come to the fore: how much we need these changes and the clients, and what they will be about, whether we have enough resources to implement them. The decisive word here remains for the commercial director of the company (he is also the head of the “Electronic document management” department).

At the same stage expert groups are formed for individual tasks. Different experts can enter the expert group, besides the developers: for something you need to attract a designer, for something - a specialist in technical support, and so on. For each expert group, schedules of meetings are formed at which the current work on the task will be discussed.

Development of SED: from idea to implementation

Development of the new version of the EDS begins in late April. Prior to this, a project of release with a schedule of resources is created and transmitted to the development department: what tasks need to be completed, how many programmers will be required for this, and how many hours they need to work on them. It includes improvements approved by the expert council, as well as improvements approved for previous releases, but for some reason or another they were not included (provided by a business analyst). At the same intermediate stage, a technical description of the release is created: what has been changed and how it works.

At the same time, a working group consisting of developers is gathered, the document is being read, the tasks are distributed, and in May the development of an electronic document management system will start, which will last until mid-August. In the process of developing, expert groups for different tasks meet according to their own schedules, discussing current problems.


“Birth” of the meetings module

After the developer finishes work on each new task and brings the result in finished form to the main branch of the system, its testing begins. The testing department checks the new changes for operability and sends a list of tasks for correcting errors to the development department. By mid-August, errors must be corrected.

“When testing, it is necessary to take into account that some customers use the standard solution THESIS, others will modify and supplement the functionality of the system with the help of the settings we provide, the designers and other features. And still others will create, independently or with our help, expansion projects. This dictates some restrictions on adding new features to the release, since we need to “do no harm” to current customers. Our specialists are pretty deeply immersed in the business context of clients, so the department takes an active part in the development of the product as a whole, ”says Svetlana Melnikova, head of the quality department.

Judgment Day per month: completion of the development of the SED and preparation for release

In mid-August, the day comes when a code freeze is done - “freezing” the system code for changes. Developers can no longer introduce any new features to the release - just fix bugs. The testing department again starts its work, looking for errors that have arisen as a result of correcting other errors (anecdotal thing in the programming world - do you know the famous poem?).



New "notions" that have arisen during the development period begin to be stored in the next minor (intermediate) release. Some works that were shifted due to lack of resources, or sudden proposals from the sales department, if they are easy to implement, are transferred there.

Next starts the preparation for release.

Testing and correction of the remaining errors continues, and at the same time, the technical writer, who compiles the documentation for the new features, enters the work, and the marketing department is preparing news and press releases about the release of the new version. In their work, these employees are guided by a technical description (it is usually the testing department).

In early September, the first installation of the new release: the alpha release is installed on a server accessible to sales staff. They should familiarize themselves with the new features of the system before telling clients about them.

At the same time, the general functional specification for the system is updated (in the document “what they wanted to do” is corrected to “what they really did”). Private technical specifications for the development of an electronic document management system, which were issued to expert groups (according to the same principle), are also updated.


Graphic comment of our business analyst on updating CTE

Testing and fixing bugs (already found by the sales department) is still ongoing ... In the same period, the marketing department (or technical support depending on the workload) writes the document “Distinctive features of the release of THESIS XX”, which will subsequently be sent to existing customers.

Soon the sales department receives an alpha release update with corrected errors, and the testing department updates the “Technical description of the release” document and brings it into view in which it can be shown to customers.

The middle of September is the second installation of the new release: the intracorporate SED TEZIS is updated. Yes, we ourselves use our SED and we believe that we should be the first to experience all the changes on ourselves before offering them to our clients.

By the end of September, the marketing department completes its work: news and press releases about the upcoming release of the system are sent, information on the system’s capabilities, and demonstration materials and videos on the site are updated.

At the same time, the sales department conducts webinars, at which a new version of the system is presented to the court, first to partners and then to customers.

By the end of the month testing is completed. By the same moment instructions should be ready to the system. Preparation for the "birthday" of the system is completed.

Full release: presentation of the results of the development of the EDS to customers

The Tezis system will be released on September 30 or October 1 - for example, Tezis 4.1 was released on October 1, 2015. So according to the horoscope, our SED TEZIS is obviously Libra.

From this point on, the development of an electronic document management system ends, the technical support department starts updating the system with customers.

Until mid-October, “small” customers are updated - those who have purchased the Basic or Standard edition of the CES TEZIS, that is, the standard “box” of the system or the system with minimal changes. Updating for such customers is fast and standardized on set days.

In November, usually begin to receive updates "large" customers - users of the Extended edition with significant modifications.

During this period, feedback from customers begins to come in - new ideas that will “accumulate” until the next release. Or in the development process, a minor release will be released next year - an interim release of the system, which includes corrections and changes specifically at the request of customers who are carefully collected and analyzed. At the moment it is the THESIS 4.1.4.

Thus, the development of the electronic document management system TEZIS is strictly on schedule. And this is natural - we must be able to discipline ourselves so that we can efficiently restore order in the workflow of our clients. Currently, the preparation for the release of the release of Tezis 4.2 is in full swing.