Kraft was experiencing severe performance problems with Express 2, an internal self-service application used by employees to access and change their benefits plans. The application was launched in early in 2003, but poor performance due to production problems quickly made the application unusable. Additionally, due to the Express 2 running in a shared WebSphere application environment, other unrelated applications in this environment were also adversely affected.

NVISIA consultants reviewed the application and production environment and identified three high-priority issues that could be addressed quickly. Correcting these problems stabilized all applications in the shared environment and made them usable again.

NVISIA’s engagement began with a one-day project review. After the review, NVISIA submitted a report with recommendations. Two consultants then worked with Kraft for 4 weeks to improve the application's performance, robustness and extensibility. The goal of the 4 week project was to quickly stabilize the application while mentoring the Kraft team on J2EE and Struts best practices. This was accomplished through consulting and informal training and mentoring. Several prototype applications were developed to provide examples of design principles and to address issues that were affecting the client's applications.

Subsequently, NVISIA provided a number of technical seminars on other topics and created a microsite in order to meet Kraft’s priority of knowledge transfer.

Production problems were eliminated or greatly reduced in all applications running in the shared WebSphere environment. In addition to the improvements to the Express 2 application, the best practices guidance NVISIA provided was used by Kraft’s staff in designing the Benefits Enrollment application. The Benefits Enrollment system is now used by all of Kraft’s more than 30,0000 North American employees. In general, improvements to the Express 2 application were used as a concrete example of J2EE best practices which can now be incorporated by the Kraft team in all future projects. Because of the mentoring and informal training, the Kraft team has become more self-sufficient and is now able to design applications without outside assistance.