INTRODUCTION:
A tier one bank faced frequent outages in a recently launched mobile internet banking solution. Like many traditional banks, their IT stack combines generations of platforms from mainframe to microservices, where a modern solution is heavily integrated with existing legacy platforms in a hybrid cloud model. Capco was called to perform a deep dive eight-week architecture assessment to map, identify, and prioritize improvement opportunities across four major IT domains: Operation Practices, Architecture, Development, and Technology Infrastructure, and to guide them in the required steps towards a more resilient and scalable solution. Capco’s strong relationship with this client helped us ensure the successful delivery model which combined our Brazilian, German and English expertise.
WHY NOW?
To stay competitive in a market where digital banks are rising, many traditional banks strive to deliver modern internet banking products as they have additional challenges compared to their competitors - the heavy dependency on legacy platforms, public cloud restrictions, and even obsolete processes.
The digital transformation journey often requires modern and legacy to coexist, as lifting and shifting entire applications from private to public cloud or rewriting them in a cloud-native approach isn't possible all at once. Therefore, this major bank opted to use a Hybrid IT stack, connecting a microservices-based solution to legacy systems.
The complexity of a microservices architecture is challenging by itself and is often underestimated, as simply adding platforms like Kubernetes and Message Brokers to the stack doesn't ensure higher performance and scalability. The end-to-end flow must be appropriately designed, particularly the integration with external components; otherwise, their technical faults can be propagated to the new solution, limiting the benefits of this investment. The company may need to increase the technical specialization of the team, reach a higher DevOps maturity level, and adjust the release and risk management processes.
The client trusted Capco to identify the gaps and identify the required steps towards a more resilient and scalable solution.
HOW WE DID IT:
Capco performed a deep dive eight-week architecture assessment to map, identify, and prioritize improvement opportunities. A team of specialized consultants in architecture, engineering, DevOps and IT Infrastructure ran several workshops with the corresponding customer segments, analysed the provided documentation, determined improvement opportunities and developed recommendations.
Approach
• Select problematic flows and successful flows with similar complexity
• Compare the key differences between them, identify root causes of the main issues
Execution
• Focus on four major domains (Operations, Architecture, Development and Technology Infrastructure)
• Conduct over 20 workshops with CIO, department heads, senior developers and architects
• Present the findings to challenge the outcomes, achieving a common understanding, and prioritizing value-driven results
Final report
• Improvement opportunities are grouped into solution themes and rated by impact/complexity
• Results and action plan are presented, with topics categorized as follows:
o Short-term - focus on technical debt
o Tactical initiative - focus on quick wins
o Milestones - focus on must-haves
o Strategic - future-orientated focus
WHAT WE DELIVERED:
77 findings were clustered into three domains - Architecture & Engineering, Process & Governance, and Implementation, and designated to one of the solution themes below:
1. Solution intent (SI) / rainy day scenarios
2. Knowledge management solution (KMS)
3. Service assurance solution (SAS)
4. Cloud capacity governance modernization (CCGM)
5. Microservice COE (MsCOE)
6. RCA process & governance
7. Technical debt management solution
8. Horizontal communication channel
9. DevOps infrastructure & operations efficiency
10. Development team autonomy
11. Enhanced mobile hybrid architecture
12. Test reinforcement
16 concrete initiatives were created from these themes, and presented as an action plan with short-, mid- and long-term results. A short-term impact was the transparency achieved by the workshops. Many of the challenges were already known by specific teams, but the critical gap’s visibility was enhanced due to this assessment, as key players from adjacent areas, directors and technical experts were involved in the discussion rounds. Based on the outcomes of our work, the client can now invest efficiently in both technical and governance improvements, moving away from “firefighting” incidents towards fixing the root causes and progressively optimizing the solution’s resilience.