Engineering an 'Open' client/server-platform for a distributed Austrian Alpine road-pricing system in 240 days-case study and experience report

The paper describes engineering a system for a distributed Austrian Alpine road-pricing environment as well as the structure and organization of the software development. The client/server-based road-pricing system, handling on average 1.2 million vehicle transitions per month, had be to operational within a mere eight months after the start of the project. Current practical and industrial problems of client/server system strategies are discussed. Our main theses derived from the presented case study are: in current medium to large software engineering tasks there is a need for a) technical specialists for industrially identified project stress points (database, network, front-end) with experience in large projects, b) a project and process plan for a (very) short development time frame before production, and c) a dynamic production-oriented process model rather than a traditional linear process model.