If you are looking to modernize your payments systems but aren’t sure of where to begin without impacting your business-critical operations, Thoughtworks can help you jumpstart your modernization program. In this 9-12 month engagement, Thoughtworks will deliver a minimum viable product (MVP) to modernize one of your critical payments capabilities.

While collaborating with your team, Thoughtworks’ technologists will analyze your existing payments system and identify key features to modernize. This cross-functional team will then select high-impact features for the MVP so you can showcase the value of your modernization program to your stakeholders.

Thoughtworks will leverage their vast experience developing payments systems using AWS cloud, to build a solution that follows AWS Well Architected Framework, so your MVP is scalable, extensible and maintainable. This new, modernized MVP will coexist in production with your mainframe, so your customers don’t experience any service disruptions. Since Thoughtworks automates parallel testing between the mainframe and new systems, you can match or exceed the performance and capabilities of your legacy software.

Sample agenda

During this engagement, Thoughtworks conducts the following activities.

◼︎ Agree on tech strategy and governance:

• select appropriate technologies,
• establish development standards,
• and outline decision-making processes.

◼︎ Establish a dedicated team for the modernization project.

◼︎ Develop the modernization MVP:

• Iterative design and development using agile practices
• Showcase the MVP to stakeholders to demonstrate new functionality and benefits
• Refine functionality based on feedback and performance data.
• Improve the solution to handle your transaction volumes

◼︎ Upskill your team on the new technologies and practices employed.

Deliverables

Here’s what you can expect by the end of this 9-12 month engagement.

◼︎ A production-grade MVP that coexists with your mainframe and provides features and performance on-par with the components it replaces.

◼︎ A blueprint for future modernization initiatives that includes:

• Architecture governance: processes to manage your modernized architecture.
• Reference architecture: the target state for your modernized payment systems.
• Delivery playbook: state-of-the art engineering practices for your modernization program.
• Reusable components and frameworks: so you can accelerate development in future initiatives.
• Investment roadmap: our advice and recommendations, so your stakeholders can decide how to scale the modernization program.

◼︎ A governance framework for your modernization program, that includes:

• The regular discipline of showcases to business stakeholders.
• Measures of success and KPIs to assess the value of your modernization program.
• Engineering metrics that will highlight the functional and non-functional effectiveness of your development process.

Applicable areas

Thoughtworks’ legacy payments modernization MVP is for you, if you are convinced that you must upgrade your systems, but need an engineering partner to help you deliver your first value increment.

During this engagement Thoughtworks will partner with you to rollout a production-grade MVP that:

• coexists with your legacy systems;
• performs and functions on par with the systems it replaces;
• and proves the value of modernization to your business stakeholders. You’ll also come away with a blueprint for future modernization initiatives so your executives can make the most valuable investments for your business.

Applicable AWS products and services

During this engagement Thoughtworks will advise you on AWS products and services such as Amazon S3, AWS Lambda, AWS Managed Airflow, Amazon EMR, Amazon RDS, Amazon EKS, Kafka Connect, AWS CloudHSM, Amazon DynamoDB that you can employ to deliver the MVP.