How We Do It

Delivery Process

Our delivery process is designed to get your applications live in as straight forward a manner as possible and consists of a number of broad phases or stages.

Commercial and Legal feasibility
Commercial discussions are usually commenced far in advance of technical work beginning, however sometimes it may be necessary to carry out a technical study or experiment before commercial work can be completed. At the very least an NDA should be in place between Virgin Media and any 3rd party supplier prior to work commencing.

Engaging DTV Application Delivery
Once you are all setup with your NDA and commercial agreements please engage the team formally by completing this document. (This is done by completing a Template_[Application]_product_requirements v1 0.doc.)

It serves a number of purposes:

  1. It acts as an initiation document to formally engage our services which we need for sizing, planning, internal communications and record keeping
  2. It acts as a specification that tells us and other departments that we work with what we are doing and why we are doing it
  3. It will form the basis of the Template_[Application]_operational_handover v1 0.doc that we give to ops as the service is going live

Technical Feasibility
Sizing of the initiative takes place within the App Delivery team. Sizing hopes to achieve the following broad objectives.

  1. Get a feel for the amount of effort involved. The simplest initiative will involve the development of new application software that can run on existing infrastructure with no process change involved within Virgin Media and no spend required outside of existing departmental op-ex. Larger works might require broadcast platform and IT changes as well as business or operation process change.
  2. Decide if the work can be delivered within the BAU process, or whether it needs to be referred to the Business Transformation Group (BTG) with the recommendation of a project being setup to cover delivery.The following factors are generally examined before commitments are given to the business.
    • Amount of new infrastructure require
    • Amount of process change required within the business
    • Level of budget or spend needed
    • Current BAU workload and its priority within the business
    • Timelines
    • Specialist knowledge and experience required
    • Management overhead likely
  3. Trials. Does the application need to undergo a live trial? in which case the trials department are engaged.

Service Development
We know what we are going to produce and how we are going to do it. This stage is about managing the delivery of the various components required to make up the service.

  1. Application development could be handled internally or by the content partner themselves
  2. Labs environments need to be setup in accordance with the service architecture
  3. Config documents to be prepared
  4. Content Partners may need support during the development process and require use of out test facilities
  5. Plans for marketing the service need to be devised

Test
Prior to testing commencing you should submit a functional test script and work with our test team to book as test slot. Testing is generally an iterative process of test cycle, fix then resubmission for test until the application achieves a standard sufficient to warrant the issue of an application sign-off certificate which is required before applications can go live.

Platform Preparation
Many applications can be launched without changes to the DTV platform or its infrastructure however if any changes are required this stage offers the opportunity for our platform engineers to implement them.

Live Trials (Optional)
If necessary, live trials are carried out to further test the system end to end and to provide a level of confidence that setup in live is all ok before launch. This not a compulsory step but is advisable for services with new infrastructure or a particularly high profile.

Launch Preparation
Create necessary handover documentation for Operations teams, ensure change requests have been submitted. Also ensure all operational teams are aware of what they need to do to support the launch and that the contact centres have been briefed.

Launch
Most of the activity here involves Virgin Media operational teams. Application delivery ensures they are on hand to assist if unanticipated issues are encountered. eTV surveillance ensure they have the proper access to the service to allow them to monitor it once live.

Post-Launch
Once your service is live dedicated teams within Virgin Media will monitor your service and report on issues experienced in the field. TV Application Delivery will liaise with you as a content partner if any work is required to fix issues.

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