Development of a Large Scale Logistics System

Abstract: This talk presents the development process of SALog, one of Kühne + Nagel’s major software projects, out of a developer’s point of view. SALog is an IT operational system for sea- and airfreight. It is split into four major releases that represent four business processes the system has to support (Sea/Air Import/Export). Each release is further split into subreleases which are divided into multiple iterations.
The talk focuses on the development of a subrelease in the SALog environment, from functional to technical specification over development to integration test. The intention is to give computer science students an idea of what an industry project of an IT department with more than 1.100 employees and more than 40.000 clients looks like rather than map the presented approach to well defined textbook methods.
Topics covered include requirements specification, technical design, test driven development, continuous integration and how agile methods are implemented in a rather heavy weight approach.