MasterCard International: Phase II

"MasterCard is an association comprised of more than 15,000 member financial institutions, serving consumers and businesses, both large and small, in 210 countries and territories."

The Challenge: Combine Two Systems, Keep All Functionality

In 2002, MasterCard International merged with Europay. It is common with such mergers between large companies that disparate systems need to be combined to provide a unified business process for the business units in both companies. MasterCard and Europay were no different, needing a new system to provide all the functionality found in the original systems while providing an intuitive and efficient user interface.

The Solution: User-Oriented Custom Software Development

One of the best ways to ensure end-user acceptance for a new software system is to, from the beginning, involve the end-users in the development process. This technique is particularly useful for projects involving business owners with established procedures where compromise by all parties is inevitable.

With these ideas in mind, my team arranged several meetings with the business owners to document the system functionality. As lead developer, I was responsible for creating a prototype to provide the end-users with a close approximation of the look and feel that would exist in the final system. This was an iterative process where each meeting resulted in further refinements to the prototype. Eventually, all parties were in agreement that all the critical requirements had been captured by the prototype. At this point we proceeded with the actual programming. We're still in the programming phase of this project.

Roles

Database Designer
Lead Computer Programmer
System Architect
User Interface Designer

Technology Used

Microsoft Access 2002
Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 (VB)
Oracle 8i
Visio 2002

Reader's Digest (2004 to 2006)

Akri Consulting (1999 to 2004)

Silver Systems (1996 to 1999)