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With around 7,500 employees, Versicherungskammer Bayern (VKB) is Germany’s largest public provider of personal and property insurance. The company pays out over €30 million daily in claims and benefits. To ensure its product range remains up to date, a team of around ten people uses Enterprise Architect, LemonTree and SmartGit to develop new insurance products via Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM).

René Schwaiger has been with VKB for about a year and works as a Business Architect in the modelling team: “As insurance products are quite complex, we end up with very large volumes of data in the models. Although there is a separate model for each product, ultimately everything is stored in a central file, as the whole system is based on a uniform structural model. Until now, this meant that any cross-cutting change involved a great deal of effort, and not everyone could work on the modelling in parallel. That’s why the desire for a change arose, and we discovered LemonTree and SmartGit through LieberLieber.”

Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) with LemonTree and Git

EAM describes the interplay between IT and business operations from a holistic and somewhat abstract perspective. Today, the term also encompasses topics such as change management, corporate culture and staff development. The key areas of EAM are architectures in the following fields:

• Business processes
• Information and data
• Applications
• Technologies

“Working with LemonTree (Diff/Merge) and Git (version control) in EAM is still largely uncharted territory. We therefore need to clarify many new questions in our collaboration with LieberLieber that have not yet been addressed. “Take, for example, the interaction between LFS (large file storage), Git and Enterprise Architect, which we were confronted with,” says Schwaiger, offering insights into the transition.

Dr Konrad Wieland, Managing Director of LieberLieber: “LemonTree has proven its value very successfully in model-based systems engineering (MBSE) in recent years. At the same time, however, the importance of EAM for companies has also grown, and we see an interesting area of application for our expertise here. We are therefore delighted to have gained a client in VKB who has recognised the benefits of our EAM offering and is introducing new work processes together with us. Thanks to VKB’s confidence in our expertise, we are working together to overcome the challenges we face and are opening up a new area of application for LemonTree.”

Clearly defined Git workflow

Using Git is often a challenge for newcomers. It was therefore essential to make the Git workflow as simple as possible. Based on the type of changes required at VKB, a clearly defined workflow was established in joint workshops. Philipp Kalenda, Head of Consulting at LieberLieber, comments: “Over the last few years, we have been working intensively on how we can expand LemonTree to ensure success in the EAM sector as well. A major stumbling block here is working with Git, which needs to be simplified. VKB is a pioneer in this field, and together we have been able to develop a suitable Git workflow. When venturing into such uncharted territory, it takes a great deal of openness and a willingness to learn on all sides to solve the problems that arise together, step by step.”

Collaboration on models significantly simplified

The introduction of the new workflow enables collaborative work on additional features within a so-called ‘feature branch’. The feature branch is a separate branch in the version control system (Git) that branches off from the stable main code. It facilitates parallel development by multiple people and simplifies code reviews. Once the feature is complete, it is integrated into the main branch (main/master). “The change has increased the modellers’ autonomy and strengthened collaboration within the development team. At the same time, control over developments has improved. Collaboration with LieberLieber is going very well; our requests are dealt with quickly, and so we are gradually growing into the new processes,” explains Schwaiger.

Currently, the modelling team works primarily for the group and one of its subsidiaries. Users of the models have read-only access, but changes are only made by the development team. “If word gets around about our success with the new way of working, we are always open to expanding our remit. LemonTree does offer a number of interesting features – such as breaking large models down into sub-models – which we want to gradually get to know and test. We are confident that our workflows will continue to improve and become more efficient through our collaboration with LieberLieber,” Schwaiger concluded.

((Info Box 1))

VKB uses the following modelling tools:

• Enterprise Architect
• LemonTree
• SmartGit

((Info Box 2))

EAM: Greater control and better collaboration

Would you like to transform your Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) with LemonTree and Git? Then just get in touch with us!

Your benefits:

1. Git version control for architecture models

→ Traceable and secure comparison & merging of changes (Diff & Merge)

1. Edit models in parallel
→ Teams work simultaneously on large-scale architectures

2. Scaling large EAM landscapes
→ Breakdown into components, manageable even for complex systems

3. Governance & quality assurance
→ Clear review, approval and audit processes for architectural changes

4. Integration into DevOps & ALM
→ Architecture becomes part of the end-to-end development and toolchain (e.g. Git, CI/CD, ALM)

LieberLieber: Because every change matters! 

About Versicherungskammer Bayern (VKB)

The Versicherungskammer Bayern Group comprises eleven insurance companies and strong regional brands. Its product range covers life and property insurance for private customers, businesses, farmers, self-employed professionals, local authorities and other public-sector bodies and institutions.

• Over 200 years of experience
• 7,500 employees
• 4,800 advice centres
• EUR 32 million in claims and benefit payments daily

https://www.vkb.de/