Excuse the length of this post, but your question does merit a
comprehensive answer.
The first stage should be to develop a set of maps of the client's
business processes. For insurance, this needs to include detailed workflows.
The second stage is to take those maps and compare them with what is
available. For insurance, the norm seems to be legacy systems that
have been ported to new platforms. I haven't looked at this for a
while, but there were no comprehensive packages around when I last
researched this.
The third stage is to build a full plan for the stand-alone
development. It does not need to be detailed, but it should be good
enough to provide a time-line and an indication of the development
budget. The full budget will include the new infrastructure to
support the system, but it is unlikely that you can do anything about
it at this stage, except warn the client that it will be there.
The fourth stage is to build a technology map. If there are
salespeople on the road they might need VPN, and so on. This will
lead to a deeper understanding of the time and costs.
Now, in my experience, if this is a green fields insurance company,
they are likely to decline, based on cost and stick with their
current systems, which are usually disintegrated and often exchange
information via insecure spreadsheets. I think that this may happen
here. It would unlikely that the board would be happy with a
piecemeal development with no clear schedule or budget, as the one
thing that these people are good at is estimating risk. I would
check if those responsible for governance are involved in the decision-making.
The trick here is to be paid for the first four stages. You will
have done a good job and the client will have strong support for its decisions.
The nth stage is selecting a programming language, where n is an
integer greater than 20.
Regards,
David
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