DIGITAL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

MGMT8048

Individual Project

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION PROJECT IN TELKOMSEL

BY PT. MITRA INTEGRASI INFORMATIKA

By:

Jonathan Djuwandi ID 2140026380

MM in Business Management – Professional Program

Binus Business School, Binus University

Jakarta

February 2020
I. Introduction
PT. Metrodata Electronics Tbk (Metrodata) was founded in 1983, and started to
focus on IT industry since 1975. It is a public company whose shares has been listed
in Bursa Efek Indonesia (BEI) in 1990. The company became one of the leading
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Indonesia that partners with
world-class IT companies [CITATION PTM15 \l 14345 ]. Metrodata is recorded in
Indonesian Fortune 100, and receives the prestigious Forbes Indonesia award.
PT. Mitra Integrasi Informatika (MII) is one of the subsidiaries company of Metrodata
and it was founded on March 1, 1996. MII itself is also an IT solution provider which
focuses on digital transformation, infrastructure, ICT managed services, system
integration, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementations, and Consulting
services based on industry Best Practices [ CITATION PTM18 \l 14345 ]. The vision of MII
is to become the most trusted digital technology provider. It is aligned with 3
missions that they set in the company:
 To provide efficient and effective digital transformation, innovative added
value, and service excellence to customers and business partners.
 To maximize shareholders’ value and build great place to work.
 To enhance the digital technology advancement in Indonesia.
MII believes that now is the age of customers where they have more influence,
information, and choices than ever before. In order to survive in this era, business
organizations need digital transformation so they could deliver high quality customer
experience. Therefore, the company have 3 values which are integrity,
professionalism, and entrepreneurship.
This report will discuss about MII project in PT. Telkom Indonesia, to be exact in
Telkomsel Indonesia. Telkomsel is the number one network and internet provider in
Indonesia. It is founded in 26 Mei 1995 and has committed to embrace remote
locations, islands, and country borders to have communication access. Currently,
Telkomsel have more than 209.000 BTS connecting over 170 million Telkomsel
customers across Indonesia. After becoming the first provider to introduce 2G, 3G,
and 4G LTE in Indonesia, Telkomsel is currently working on to introduce 5G network
to support Making Indonesia 4.0 [ CITATION Tel18 \l 14345 ].
Telkomsel is currently implementing digital transformation in every department it has.
Digital transformation is often described as future business opportunities and
strategies for firms that are partly or fully based on digital technologies. Digital
transformation strategies take on a different perspective and pursue different goals.
Coming from a business-centric perspective, these strategies focus on the
transformation of products, processes, and organizational aspects owing to new
technologies [ CITATION Mat15 \l 14345 ]. The reason is because Telkomsel is preparing
for industry 4.0 where Indonesia is now heading towards there. The Fourth Industrial
Revolution is not only seemed to bring extraordinary benefits, but also recast the
face of industry in Indonesia, especially in manufacturing sector. The shifting process
to the service-based economy causes the declining of manufacturing industry
contribution to the country’s GDP to 22% in 2016, when it had reached the highest
point of 26% in 2001. Without any intervention, this condition is going to be worse in
2030, thus a revitalization in manufacturing sector is very crucial. Realizing this
threat, the government is trying to fetch the opportunities that follow the fourth
industrial revolution. The government, through The Ministry of Industry, finally
established the initiative “Making Indonesia 4.0” to implement the strategy while
entering the new industry era [ CITATION Hid19 \l 14345 ]. Telkomsel contracts lots of
vendors to support their digital transformation and industry 4.0 initiatives. MII is one
of the vendors that is appointed to support the project. Telkomsel wanted to migrate
all of their internal applications to a new low-code platform that is currently rising in
the world of software development. The low-code platform is called Outsystems, and
Telkomsel appointed MII to implement Outsystems in their internal business
functions. Outsystems is a low-code application development platform that simplifies
every stage of the application development and delivery process. It is stated that it
could cut development process time at half and make development cost much more
efficient [ CITATION Out18 \l 14345 ]. Telkomsel chose Outsystems because using low-
code technology, they could create applications (web & mobile) quickly and just need
to focus on the business process which can be provided by Outsystems.

II. Problem Identification

Chaffey Chapter 3: Managing Digital Business Infrastructure – Application
Programming Interface (API)
Before using Outsystems, Telkomsel uses React for all their internal applications
including mobile and web. Telkomsel currently have more than 50 applications
consisting of web and mobile and proposed to migrate them into Outsystems
platform. However, many of their internal data like organizational structure,
directorates, and sub directorates are not using API. This could lead the implementor
to have a hard time for integrating the current system because change is constantly
happening in the data. An API allows an application programmer to efficiently
develop an application program capable of interfacing with the computing platform
because the interface work is already done by the API. The programmer simply
incorporates or programs the needed API functions from the API library into the
application program. A programmer may use a Software development kit (SDK) or
other tool to develop application programs. The development tool may include APIs
or may enable the developer to remotely access APIs for a particular computer
platform. Currently, most APIs are either openly accessible or include access control
capabilities as part of the API [ CITATION Mic08 \l 14345 ].
If API is not used, the data between applications will be not synchronized.
Traditionally, many companies keep their information within their firewalls for security
reasons. But, in this internet era this strategy may limit opportunities to add value to
their services or share information via other online companies and their web services
to increase their potential reach [ CITATION Cha15 \l 14345 ]. For the login information,
the company already implement API using Azure Active Directory from Microsoft
which is a good thing because there are thousands of employees available in
Telkomsel and if they don’t implement API for user credentials, the developers or
operational team would suffer badly because they have to register the employee to
the new system one by one. However, APIs for the directorates, sub-directorates,
and leaders in each department doesn’t exist while starting the project.
Chaffey Chapter 10: Change Management – Agile Software Development
The product owner or user in Telkomsel is known to give a very tight deadline for
developing the requested application. In the MII side, currently there is not a specific
method that is really used in developing the applications. The best practice of using
Outsystems platform is with agile methodology[ CITATION Out181 \l 14345 ]. Agile
development is an iterative approach to developing software and website
functionality with the emphasis on face-to-face communications to elicit, define and
test requirements [ CITATION Cha15 \l 14345 ]. The method relies on technical excellence
and simple designs – create business value by delivering working software to users
at regular short intervals. These principles have spawned a number of practices that
are believed to deliver greater value to customers. At the core of these practices is
the idea of self-organizing teams whose members are not only collocated but also
work at a pace that sustains their creativity and productivity. The principles
encourage practices that accommodate change in requirements at any stage of the
development process [ CITATION Moe12 \l 14345 ]. The customers are actively involved
in the development process. Furthermore, the principles are not a formal definition of
agility, but are rather guidelines for delivering high-quality software in an agile
manner. Software development agility means the continued readiness to rapidly or
inherently create change, proactively or reactively embrace change, and learn from
change while contributing to perceived customer value (economy, quality, and
simplicity), through its collective components and relationships with its environment
[ CITATION Con09 \l 14345 ]. [ CITATION Xia10 \l 14345 ] define software development agility
“as the software team’s capability to efficiently and effectively respond to and
incorporate user requirement changes during the project life cycle.”
In order to implement Agile development, Scrum methodology is needed. Scrum is a
methodology that supports agile software development based on 15–30-day sprints
to implement features from a product backlog [ CITATION Cha15 \l 14345 ]. The
methodology involves a scrum master or is usually called project manager, product
owner who represents the stakeholders or the business owners or the customers,
and also developers. Application stage functionality is set and agreed at a sprint
planning from product backlog. Product backlog is central to the SCRUM method.
The product backlog contains a prioritized list of all items relevant to a specific
product. This list can consist of bugs, customer requested enhancements,
competitive product functionality, competitive edge functionality and technology
upgrades. Once a requirement has been fully specified, with the approval of a
developer, the requirement can be copied from the product backlog onto the
Development Sprint Backlog [ CITATION Vla10 \l 14345 ].
In the projects that MII is currently doing, there is no sign of implementing scrum. In
the MII side, the developers usually only receive very basic not detailed business
requirements document which leads to a lot of questions asked by the developers
during the development process.
Chaffey Chapter 11: Analysis & Design – Flow Process Charts & Workflow
Management
Before starting software development or coding, creating a simple flowchart is a
good starting point for describing the sequence of activities of a workflow. Flow
charts are effective in that they are easy to understand by non-technical staff and
also, they highlight bottlenecks and inefficiencies. Flow process charts are used
commonly when solving digital business problems, whether in the front office or the
back office [ CITATION Cha15 \l 14345 ]. Every symbol in the flowchart refers to an
operation in the application. Having often taught programming courses in several
programming languages in high school years, we noticed the existence of barriers in
learning, and that there’s no definitive strategy to overcome them. The use of
flowcharts is a common strategy, since visual stimulus is often stronger than abstract
concepts, and structured language is used in parallel as an introduction to common
programming languages. The direct relation between flowcharts and structured
programming language is the key concept that we explore through automated
processes [ CITATION Jes11 \l 14345 ]. Flowchart plays an important role in system
requirements analysis, preliminary design and detailed design aspects. It is
particularly important when making communication and discussion, analysis and
design of algorithms [ CITATION WuX11 \l 14345 ].

Figure 1 Flowchart Symbols [ CITATION Cha15 \l 14345 ]

Figure 2 Flowchart example of a person using workflow process [ CITATION Cha15 \l 14345 ]

During the start of the project, there is no document which contains flow process of
the applications requested. This could lead to misunderstanding between the
business owner and the technical person. When there is lack of specific guide to the
software requirement, usually the developers tend to guess and speculate about the
functionality based on their own thoughts. If this happened, then in the end there will
be a clash between the product owner and the developers, but the one who usually
being confronted is the project manager. The timeline of the project delivery will also
be delayed due to the mismatch with what the product owner is expecting with the
results of the application. Even worse, the project could fail if the change requires
major dismantling of the code until it reach the point where it is better to start from
scratch again. The flowchart is also very useful for project managers as a solid proof
that it is the process that is agreed by the product owner. So, if suddenly there is a
major change in the business process or flowchart, the project manager can counter
the product owner about the agreement of the software requirement.

III. Findings and Discussions

Application Programming Interface (API)
During the development stage of the project, MII uses dummy data for a temporary
time because the data for directorates, sub-directorates, and leaders is not given yet
by Telkomsel. Some of the data are even hard-coded, which in software
development it is not a good idea because developers tend to forget which part that
is hard-coded and it will be hard to track if there are bugs due to the hard-coded part
of the application. Upon reaching the final part of development for the first release,
Telkomsel stated that changes in management are happening quite frequently and
the data is not small. The data of directorates, sub-directorates, and leaders for each
department are available somewhere in existing application that only the IT
department in Telkomsel can have access. So, vendors like MII is not allowed to
access that application. An API allows an application programmer to efficiently
develop an application program capable of interfacing with the computing platform
because the interface work is already done by the API. The programmer simply
incorporates or programs the needed API functions from the API library into the
application program [ CITATION Mic08 \l 14345 ]. That is why by implementing API can
give many advantages towards Telkomsel because data can be shared between
their applications from multiple platforms.
Telkomsel is known for giving a very tight deadline, sudden change request, and
giving a very slow response if we request something to them like master data or
generating APIs that is required to be used in the application that MII is developing.
Hence, that would affect the timeline of the project. Some of the project are delayed
at a long time because of simple things such as requesting API to Telkomsel need a
lot of time. The product owner doesn’t care about these things because they are
more business oriented. What they care is that, MII as the vendor can deliver the
project on time. There was a time where the API was not generated yet, but the
product owner wanted to show the application to the VPs and related people in the
organizations. There is no other way rather than using dummy data for temporary
time so that a single cycle of the application can be performed. Upon the application
is about to go live, Telkomsel also gave only a day for MII to implement the API of
directorates, sub-directorates, and leaders of organization to the application. It is not
impossible to do that in 1 day because many changes are required to be done by the
developers in the multiple workflow module.
After applying the API to the application, another problem occurred. After waiting all
those time for the API, it turns out that some of the API are facing errors. Some
cannot be opened, and some uses the wrong parameter so it couldn’t be applied to
the application. So, the release of the project is delayed again until the IT department
in Telkomsel fix the APIs. If since the beginning of the project Telkomsel have their
APIs ready or at least can respond quickly to our request regarding the API, the
project could be delivered on time and if there are errors in the way of implementing
it, the time taken to finish the project will not be as long as the current state.
Agile Software Development
In the projects that MII is doing with Telkomsel, the product owner in Telkomsel
really likes to surprise the project manager and developers of MII by requesting a
sudden change or even additional complex processes to the application. The best
way to react with this sudden change request is by implementing Agile methodology.
Agile means the ability to adapt towards different changes and fine-tune
development processes as needed. In software development terms, agile means the
software team’s capability to effectively respond to and incorporate user requirement
changes during the project life cycle [ CITATION Moe12 \l 14345 ]. In order to support
agile development, scrum methodology is needed. Scrum is based on 15-30-day
sprints to implement features from the product backlog so that prioritized
requirement could be finished [ CITATION Cha15 \l 14345 ].
From actual experience, it is analysed that Agile and Scrum methodology is not well
performed in the projects of MII with Telkomsel. Even, it is very abstract and quick in
terms of software development. Implementing Scrum methodology usually every 15
or 30 days the team will do a scrum meeting, where the project manager and the
developers discussed what has been done and what to do next. There is a tool for
helping project managers to manage the product backlog and sprints details called
Trello. Trello is the easy, free, flexible, and visual way to manage your projects and
organize anything, trusted by millions of people from all over the world [ CITATION
Tre20 \l 14345 ]. However, MII or Telkomsel haven’t implement this methodology. On
the MII side, the project manager and team developers never performed scrum
meetings at all. In the progress of developing the software, the team only
communicates via Whatsapp application which sometimes creates many
miscommunications between the project manager and the developers. At certain
times, the developers tend to speculate about specific functions that has unclear
description. For example, in the development of War on Waste application in
Telkomsel by MII. The application is created to be used by employees from staff to
the C-levels. Through the application, employees can send ideas to other
departments. The ideas must be related to efficiency or saving cost in the
departments that is appointed. However, the ideas must be submitted to the upper
management first for approval with email notification. In the beginning of the project,
there is no clear documentation on which action triggers the email notification and
the destination on the emails. The deadline given was also very short that is why the
developers are also under pressure and speculate about which recipients should
receive the email and what action triggers them. In the end, when the application is
tested by the product owner, it was discovered that many of the process of email
notification is wrong and not what is expected by the product owner.
From the Telkomsel side, the product owner is also not really involved in the
development of the project. The software development team rarely meet with the
product owner to discuss about the progress of the project. It is because either the
product owner is always busy or is having a meeting. So, the software development
team only meet the representative of the product owner which is the assigned IT
team for bridging communication between the product owner and software
development team of MII. The lack of presence of the product owner creates mis-
communication on what the product owner really wants and what the software
development team is interpreting.
Flow Process Charts & Workflow Management
The business requirement document given by Telkomsel doesn’t include any
flowcharts that describes the workflow of the application. The use of flowchart is
effective in that they are easy to understand by non-technical staff and also, they
highlight bottlenecks and inefficiencies. Flow process charts are used commonly
when solving digital business problems, whether in the front office or the back office.
Each symbol in the chart refers to a particular operation within the overall process
[ CITATION Cha15 \l 14345 ]. The business requirement document also doesn’t have any
standards. Some projects present the business requirement document in the form of
UI and descriptive explanation only, some projects even only created in the form of
UI mock-up without any description at all. The developers are having a hard time in
developing the application because there are so many ambiguous functions with no
exact description at all.
The current case in Telkomsel project is the Emergency Apps for employee. It
consists of web and mobile application. The application is intended for Telkomsel
employees to report accidents and request for immediate response for medical
support. If an accident happens, the employee can use their smartphones to report
the accident and request for immediate medical support to the admin. The admin will
use the website version of emergency app and monitor the reports of the accident.
Admin can also give an assist to the emergency requestor and send all the
information required via SMS. Besides that, the admin can also broadcast news
about possible disasters that might be coming so the employee can prepare before
the disaster happen. This project actually has started but it handed to other team that
had just finished developing the War on Waste application. So, the software
development team that will handle the Emergency Apps project doesn’t know much
about the application because they were not involved in the first kick-off meeting of
the project. After requesting the business requirement document, the software
development team was surprised because it is only in the form of mock-up
application with no description at all. During the development phase, the developers
asked lots of questions because it is unclear and there is no explanation at all about
the flow process of the application.
Discussing back about the War on Waste application, there is a module for workflow
management in it. Workflow systems automate digital business processes by
providing a structured framework to support a process [ CITATION Cha15 \l 14345 ].
Workflow systems helps manage business processes such as:
1. Assigning tasks to people or groups.
2. Remind people about their tasks which are part of a workflow queue.
3. Allow collaboration between people sharing tasks.
A meeting was held involving the vice president of the organization, the product
owner, the representatives, and the software development team. In that meeting, it
was discovered that the workflow management process for this application is still
unclear. The vice president and product owner are having different opinions about
the workflow of the application (which organization can submit idea, which level will
approve the idea, and which role can assign person in charge to the idea). Next
meeting is scheduled the next day because Telkomsel need to discuss it internally
regarding the workflow process. On the next meeting, the workflow process is
already defined however there is no clear documentation that is given to the
developers. The information given by the product owner is only in the form of email
wording from each role. Again, the software development team are having a hard
time in interpreting the workflow process just by seeing the email wording from the
product owner because it is too ambiguous.

IV. Conclusion & Recommendation

Telkomsel should start implementing APIs in their programs. It needs to be done
because Telkomsel uses a wide variety of platforms and contracts lots of vendors.
The use of API could give advantages to Telkomsel because the information could
be shared across applications that are build. If they already had their APIs ready in
the beginning, integration with new developed apps in new platform could be done at
ease without delay. The root of cause in War on Waste application project by MII in
Telkomsel is because of waiting the APIs to be ready for use in the application.
Hence, the release of the project is postponed for quite a long time and the gap
between the planned initial release and the actual release of the application is quite
big. It might be hard in the first time because the IT team need to prepare and invest
their time in creating APIs for specific queries or functions, but if it is done in the
beginning Telkomsel would have no obstacle in doing integration between
applications in multiple platform.
In terms of software development life cycle, on the MII side needs to constantly
implementing the Scrum methodology. Internal sprint meetings should be done every
15 or 30 days to check on progress and discuss what to do next. Documentations of
the progress and application scope should also be available. The use of Trello is
very recommended for the project manager and the developers. The project
manager could manage the product backlog and assign developers to do specific
task. Sprint planning will also be clear and stated in the dashboard so that the
developers doesn’t speculate about unclear functions. In Trello, the project manager
should also include the product owner so that he or she can see the progress and
monitor the project. All the project management collaboration should be done using
Trello, and the developers should also report the task that they had finished through
it. It is much better compared to communicating via Whatsapp where messages
could be buried. From the Telkomsel side, the product owner should be more
involved in the development stage. Either they have meetings or other tasks that
makes them busy, at least the product owner should be responsive towards
questions from the development team. By involving product owners and performing
Scrum meetings constantly at an agreed period of time could be stated that the team
has implemented Agile software development in a correct way.
In preparing the business requirement document before starting developing the
applications, including flowcharts to the design of the workflow process would be
highly recommended. It is needed because it would make the people from the
business side and the people from the technical side understand the working flow
process of the applications. If there is a flowchart explaining the process of the
Emergency Apps of Telkomsel, the developers could understand what the product
owner is trying to achieve with that application. This also applies to the workflow
management process in War on Waste application. Instead of just sending email
wordings to the software development team, it is much better if the product owner
creates a flow chart explaining the workflow management process and describe
which organization should have which role in the application. By defining a clear role
for each organization in the applications, it will make the development stage to be on
time and not delayed due to making major changes in the codes.

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