luxoft software development

1. For more information about Luxoft, visit
www.luxoft.com
www.luxoft.com/travel-aviation/
case study
Luxoft Applies AGILE Expertiseto Help Hotwire Drive
Car Rental Revenue up by 15%with Continuous
Innovationthat Increased Conversion
10.10.2012
Cuu lient: Launched in 2000, Hotwire.com is an award-winning discount
travel site that negotiates deep discounts from its travel suppliers to help
travelers book unsold airline seats, hotel rooms, and rental cars. Hotwire is
an operating company of the world’s largest online travel agency: Expedia,
Inc. (NASDAQ: EXPE)
Summary
Leading Online Travel Engine Reorganizes IT Resources and
Taps Long-Time Outsourcing Partner, Luxoft to Increase
Capabilities of its Car Rental Vertical
With business booming and online traffic increasing, Hotwire made the strategic
decision to complete reorganize its IT resources to align them directly with
their business verticals: Hotel, Car, and Flights. As part of that initiative, Hotwire
also wanted to transform from the traditional Waterfall method of software
development to Agile for increased speed-to-market.
Luxoft awarded“IT Outsourcing Project of the Year 2012”for its partnership with
Hotwire Inc. by European Outsourcing Association

2. Challenge
Why Luxoft?
Luxoft needed to deliver against six aggressive business goals while ensuring
no disruption to the daily online activities of Hotwire’s business and customer
experience.
Five years of ongoing, successful collaboration with Hotwireuu
Agile and industry expertiseuu
Commitment to and alignment with business goalsuu
Financial stabilityuu
Proven track recorduu
In 2010, when global online travel aggregator Hotwire, Inc. made the strategic
decision to reorganize its IT resources to align directly with its three major
business verticals, Hotel, Flight, and Car, they were confident that Luxoft was the
right software development partner to meet the needs and objectives of the Car
vertical.
Hotwire first started working with Luxoft in 2006 on a Test Automation project.
After years of steady collaboration, proving their expertise, commitment,
financial stability and record of success, Luxoft’s offshore team of talented
software engineers collaborate to achieve even more of Hotwire’s project delivery
objectives. This impressive pedigree, along with the fact that Luxoft is the leading
provider of Agile software development services in Eastern Europe, made Luxoft
the logical partner for Hotwire’s Car Team.
02Luxoft - Case Study

3. 03Luxoft - Case Study
Online Traffic Jam: Hotwire’s Increasing
Car Rental Business Requires Big Changes
Roadmap to Success:
Luxoft’s Three-Stage Implementation Plan
Processing over 10,000 reservations daily, the Hotwire Car business delivers more
than $600M annually in gross1
bookings . Unfortunately, the traditional Waterfall
software development project model was no longer able to support the real-time
consumer demand.
By leveraging Luxoft’s experience in the Agile methodology, Hotwire successfully
made the transition to a lean development model that met and exceeded their
business objectives:
Expand Hotwire’s delivery capabilities to meet business needuu
Increase revenues by improving car rental conversion ratesuu
Strengthen product and industry knowledge among the car team membersuu
Reduce development costsuu
Increase the project speed-to-market while reducing business riskuu
Perform continuous measurement and evaluation of critical success factorsuu
Fuel innovation with change management practices that deliver businessuu
impact
Beginning in November 2010, Luxoft ensured a successful transformation from the
Waterfall model to the Agile model by focusing on three main tasks to facilitate the
adoption of the new development model:
1. Establish a Dedicated Team
Beginning with a team of just three engineers, the current Car team headcount
is eight professionals who cover different areas: back-end and front-end
development, business analysis, quality assurance, and Scrum coaching. As
the project progressed, new roles were introduced to support the distributed
team:
Proxy product owneruu
Onsite project coordinatoruu
Dedicated technical vertical owneruu
1
Source: Smith Travel; Auto Rental News. 2010 forecasts

4. 04Luxoft - Case Study
2. Transition from Waterfall to Agile
To help Hotwire adopt the Scrum methodology in November 2011, Luxoft
developed a transition plan that allowed the team to realize its benefits
without negatively affecting productivity or workflow. Agile workshops for
the client and vendors were conducted in November and a go/no-go decision
deadline on the on-site transition was set for December. In the early months
of 2012, Luxoft’s Agile coaches conducted the offshore transition and it is now
successfully in operation.
3. Delivery
During the transition period, the Luxoft team maintained its high level of
service delivery to ensure there was never a negative impact to the business.
Always going above and beyond to deliver real innovation that exceeds client
expectation, Luxoft proactively made numerous profitability enhancements to
the system, including:
Redesigning the car rental site’s result pageuu
Adding pre-paid retail inventory and additional car typesuu
Optimizing requests to Global Distribution Systems, decreasing the cost ofuu
information by 30%
Consolidating the billing pathuu
By all accounts, Hotwire is delighted with Luxoft as their partner in this important
initiative. According to Roman Kaplun, Director of Engineering Services at
Hotwire,“Luxoft constantly demonstrates a strong level of commitment and
responsiveness, and close alignment to our strategy and goals.”
“Our success on the Hotwire Car Team is another example where the partnership
has helped our business move to the next level in Product Development and
delivery,”he adds.

5. 05Luxoft - Case Study
Best Practices + Innovation:
Key Factors to Exceeding Expectations
A key factor in Luxoft’s engagement with Hotwire was an unwavering focus on
the transformation of processes and the development of industry best practices.
Using workshops, onsite visits, and with a commitment to managing personal
development, Luxoft and Hotwire realized the benefits, including:
1. Product and business knowledge ownership and management within a
dedicated team
Developed specialists and subject matter experts to collect and manageuu
the business knowledge base
Maintained a strong focus on soft skills and attitude to engage top talentuu
and develop a self-organized team that is empowered to drive change
Created a respectful work environment, without the restrictions ofuu
hierarchy and bureaucracy, that promotes professional growth
Developed a shared product vision through workshops and Sprint Zerouu
Maintained a strong and open collaboration, based on mutual trust anduu
high morale
2. Scrum agile development methodology in use
Time-to-market decreased dramaticallyuu
Smoothly integrated Scrum process into existing release scheduleuu
All Agile best practices were solidified with the supervision of Luxoft’suu
Scrum coach
Continuous improvement and immediate feedback from customers withuu
regular Sprint retrospective meetings
3. Efficient communication channels
Streamlined communication and mitigated the time difference betweenuu
the offshore and San Francisco teams with the proxy business owner in
place
Onsite coordinator to facilitate cross-team collaborationuu
4. Focus on Quality
Continuous integrationuu
20% of time in each sprint is spent for“technical debt”uu
“Stop & Fix”approachuu
Performance testing is done by a dedicated team beginning at theuu
development phase
Support of production and debugging of production incidents is doneuu
by Luxoft’s team, reducing the effort and loss of productivity for Hotwire’s
employees
Executable requirements using Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) Testuu
Automation tools (Cucumber, Selenium) to encourage collaboration with
non-technical stakeholders

6. 06Luxoft - Case Study
Project Results
Decreased business need delivery time by 300% (2012 vs. 2010)uu
Increased speed-to-market by 300% (2012 vs. 2010)uu
Increased car rental revenues by 15% by improving conversion ratesuu
Strengthened product and industry knowledge within car vertical teamuu
members
“Our success on the Hotwire Car Team is another example where the
partnership has helped our business move to the next level in Product
Development and delivery.”
- Roman Kaplun,
Director of Engineering Services at Hotwire
In addition to creating best practices, Luxoft employed several innovative
approaches to achieve the business objectives:
Created the role ofuu proxy business owner in Kiev to bridge the communication
gap in the time difference between teams
Leduu concurrent team training in Kiev and San Francisco, with a dedicated
Scrum coach for 6 months
World-renowned Scrum coach Jeff Pattonuu was retained to give the teams his
innovative Scrum practices, story mapping methods, and product discovery
techniques

7. © 2012 Luxoft
About luxoft
Luxoft, a principal subsidiary of IBS Group, is a provider of advanced
application and software engineering outsourcing services for global and
regional enterprises. Luxoft builds partnerships with its clients, such as
Boeing, IBM, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Harman, Avaya, Alstom, and Sabre, based
on the culture of engineering excellence, innovation, and deep domain
expertise. Luxoft offers international delivery capability through its network
of state-of-the-art delivery centers in North America, Eastern Europe, and
Asia. Luxoft`s customers benefit from the right mix of technology skills,
industry knowledge, proprietary processes and methodologies, and a
choice of engagement models.
For more information about Luxoft, visit
www.luxoft.com
www.luxoft.com/travel-aviation/