The LES upgrade was the first project that I worked on for United Guaranty (UG). It was also my first experience with managing a project that was entirely based on the AS/400. So, I had the fun experience of learning a new platform and OS as well as a new application, while familiarizing myself with a new company. Even at that, we did rather well... we came in on time and 20% under budget. The team consisted of Ken Culpepper (Project Manager), myself (Technical Lead), and Nagaraj Akkiangady (Programmer). Ken began as the project manager, but moved up in the company, and I took over the management responsibilities.
The Lender Evaluation System assigns letter grades to the lenders with which we do business. These are similar to the grades you might get in school, A through D, with A being the best. We also assign "I" for incomplete grades.
LES examines every certificate written over a two-year period as well as lender benchmarks and it assigns statistical scores in several categories (which the business unit calls "variables"). We then assign a numerical rating based where each score falls on an associated lookup table. We then sum up all of the numerical ratings and look up the grade in another table. The grade can then be modified by a Subjective rating that?s entered manually.
Quite a lot for such a small project! Here?s the short list:
Modified the statistical analysis of the Average Quality Score , changing the standard deviation and the upper and lower bounds, and also changed our cutoff count (which determines whether we actually have enough of a sample to score)
Streamlined the user interface, making some useability enhancements based on customer feedback.
Improved the precision of the calculations. As a result we have met our goal of zero variance with the actuaries? figures.
Re-scheduled the system to run on a quarterly basis instead of on a monthly basis. Major changes in the quality of a lender?s loans happen over the long term, and monthly evaluations were too frequent.
Allowed the actuaries to have write access to the points lookup tables. tables. Assuming that the business unit doesn?t want drastic changes to the way these calculations are made, then they?ll be able to fine-tune the grading process themselves, and this should cut down on the number of small projects generated to make changes to these tables in the future.