GX Technology: Looking for a Cost-Effective Tool that would receive organizational buy-in.

GX Technology's Image-Driven approach and innovative technologies produce high fidelity land and marine subsurface images while reducing the risk and cost of finding and producing hydrocarbons. With the addition of GMG Products, they have expanded their line and services through the entire seismic process from survey design to advanced imaging solutions. By developing new technologies, new methodologies and new business models, they provide their clients with significantly greater value in their seismic data.

As one of the leaders in PreSDM, GX Technology undertakes the most sophisticated depth imaging projects. This includes targets that are at extreme depths, obscured by salt or gas clouds, or defined by complex structure and stratigraphy. They have the ability to overcome imaging challenges presented by velocity anisotropy, near-surface velocity anomalies, and complex reservoir fracturing. Their latest research emphasis is on converted wave and full-wave processing, the results from which have already been applied to image reservoirs onshore in North America and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Challenge

Not only did the users want something that took a minimal effort to utilize, management wanted minimal time for training and something that could be administrated with minimal interaction with the IT department which was always stretched too thin.

GX Technology needed a tool to capture problems found in their in-house seismic imaging tools and with 3rd party software they use. In addition to tracking these problems, they also wanted to share and report this information between different centers and share a possible work around until the problems were resolved. Prior to using Alcea Technologies' FIT software, several attempts had been made to get an issue tracking system implemented at GX Technology using several different products including Bugzilla open source software. All attempts failed for various reasons.

Internal research was conducted by Mike Roberts of GX Technology to determine why previous attempts had failed and to identify what factors would contribute to a successful implementation. It was found that the main reason for previous failures was a lack of buy in by upper management and everyday users. Contributing to this was a small company culture/ideology that it was faster to go down the hall to a developer rather than enter something into a tool/tracker.

It was determined that a critical factor for a successful implementation would be the ease of use and administration of the tool. The IT group did not want to be involved in the day to day maintenance of the tool and the users wanted something that was easy to understand and fill out quickly. Along these same lines, someone needed to be responsible for the process and keeping people engaged.

The two main conclusions Mike came up with during his investigation were that cost was important - they did not want to spend a lot of money on the issue tracking process but wanted something flexible that could grow with them; and they needed to 'Keep It Simple Stupid'. Not only did the users want something that took a minimal effort to utilize, management wanted minimal time for training and something that could be administrated with minimal interaction with the IT department which was always stretched too thin.

Several individuals that had been involved with the previous failed attempts were identified and they contributed to the development of a requirements matrix.

The Solution

Through the implementation of the FIT software, GX Technology has found a cost-effective tool that has been embraced by users to not only track problems, but they have extended its use to organize other valuable information."

GX Technology chose Alcea Technologies' FIT software with the Database Module. They are making the most out of this flexible and configurable tool by employing it to track problems, capture best practices or hints and tips, conduct peer reviews and track and organize testcases. The FIT software has kept issues from falling through the cracks and has kept the GX Technology team informed and up-to-date on issues related to them.

Peer Reviews are tracked and organized from within the FIT system. These are gatherings of several individuals from around the company to perform a review of any major I/O pass by a user. The user fills out a form in the tracker detailing the project and I/O pass requiring review, who needs to attend and attaches a file of either the parameters in the flow that is being reviewed or a sample pass through of the parameters applied to some test data. During the actual review, comments by the attendees regarding the flow are added to the comments of the issue.

GX Technology also uses FIT to track and organize data testcases. These testcases are used to test imaging software that is developed in-house, and track certain datasets to keep them in a central location for future use. In this testcase tracker the different fields contain different attributes of the data as well as the location where this data is stored. FIT's powerful search tool allows users to quickly identify potential testcases that satisfy the specific data requirements that they may have.

Various scripts used in processing are also tracked and organized using the FIT system. This allows GX Technology to easily identify, collect and share scripts written between various centers. This way the effort is not duplicated for similar functionality and FIT again provides a quick way of identifying it.

Through the implementation of the FIT software, GX Technology has found a cost-effective tool that has been embraced by users to not only track problems, but they have extended its use to organize other valuable information.

TOP

Solutions | Services | Pricing | Demos | Support | Company | Home