Odin (2005)

Wholesale system which allowed resellers purchasing Telefónica’s huge portfolio of products and services for their customers. Worked at its web portal as Functional Analyst, meeting with stakeholders and turning their needs into development requirements afterwards.

What

Odin was a huge, complex system developed by Telefónica I+D (R&D) which interfaced with other Telefónica’s Corporate Systems. It allowed external resellers to access Telefónica’s portfolio and create orders for their customers.

Image of Odin's web portal interface, including tabs, radio buttons, combos...
Odin’s web portal

Its main interface was a web portal which had to process and validate required information for each different kind of product/service, and then generate internal orders on different provisioning systems, keeping track of their status.

My work

Meeting with internal and external stakeholders and gathering their needs was one of the main tasks of my job. Then I translated these needs into requirements for back-end and front-end development teams, which required a deep knowledge about Odin and its relations with other corporate systems.

Sample page from one of Odin's requirements documents, with a mock-up of the intended web interface
Sample of illustrated requirements

Front-end requirements were illustrated with primitive prototypes with simple “click” interactions, created with Powerpoint.

Illustration from the previous figure shown in Powerpoint
Powerpoint prototype for Odin

What I got

  • A lot of experience meeting with stakeholders, reading their needs between the lines and translating them into concrete solutions, specified by requirements.
  • Looking for agreement in big meetings, with an eye on defending our interests.
  • Integrated closely with software developers to refine and improve requirements.
  • First experiences with prototyping.
  • Learned how a big Telco works, both regarding software development processes and politics.
  • Knowledge on Corporate Systems’ interactions in business environments.

Important achievements

  • Defined an API so that Odin could receive orders from other external systems, which allowed it to extend its profitable life span.
  • Outstanding results allowed me to survive several staff cuts, and was a good referral when applying for a place at Telefónica I+D’s internal team.