Continuous Improvement & Enhancing the Core Product Features

Whether it’s a pioneering feature being implemented stemming from our continuous market research OR a feature being requested from one of our clients, a tried and tested process gets adhered to.

Every feature request gets submitted to our Change Approval Board, better known as CAB. The members of this board collectively have 104 years of insurance experience. The feature is reviewed and, if it aligns to our strategic objectives; is a mandated regulatory requirement; or aligns closely with insurer strategies which complements a stronger relationship; the request gets approved.

Should a decision not be reached in CAB and a more comprehensive assessment is required, the request gets submitted to the Design Council, which consists of a panel of three senior subject matter experts. The request gets approved if the same strategic guidelines are adhered to. Once a request gets approved, it forms part of a set of requests that get reviewed on a bi-weekly basis in a Version Release Assignment session. The request gets assigned to a version release based on the priority that’s been applied. Once the request is assigned to a version release, the requirements are re-assessed before the development cycle commences to ensure there is absolute alignment from a business and technical perspective.

The development cycle commences with a strong human-centric approach being constantly validated.

Once the development is completed, including a supporting software engineering test case document, the request gets handed over to the Quality and Assurance team.

During a release cycle, the delivery of features are broken up into bi-weekly agile sprints whereby the engineering team and the QA team work in a parallel stream. While the development team focuses on the next sprint’s work, the QA team is testing the previous sprint's work. This approach is fundamental in ensuring testing findings are addressed during the development cycle and not at the end of the cycle. This leads to an optimised process that ensures features can be released to the market quicker.

The QA team performs a full functional test on that feature and, if the test is completed successfully, based on the client’s requirements being fully met, the request is ready for production distribution. For Cardinal, it is very important to adhere to the above feature implementation principles as it ensures each request gets assessed comprehensively to produce a solution that benefits the majority of our clients and, more importantly, is future-proof so that new enhancements get built on top of a reliable, well-structured, and robust foundation.