How a social-good cloud provider standardized delivery across its technology organization and moved 2,400 requirements to Azure DevOps
Every team ran its own process and used Jira its own way. Agile Brains assessed, coached and helped build a value-based SDLC framework that has delivered 8+ large programs and introduced six-week planning cycles.
A very large cloud computing provider serving the social-good community, including foundations, corporations, educational institutions, healthcare organizations and religious organizations, had been delivering products through a mix of traditional and iterative methods. Its teams of business analysts, team leads, developers, testers, support and maintenance engineers and business stakeholders each followed their own framework.
The challenge
There was no consistency at the program or portfolio level. The organization wanted to formalize Agile delivery and needed a partner to guide its digital transformation and create a customized, consistent, value-based delivery framework.
How we helped
We began with an assessment of current processes and culture. Our Agile coaches interviewed leadership and sat in on delivery team meetings to evaluate the current state. The findings were clear: teams managed projects and process flow very differently, and each used Jira however it saw fit.
The assessment recommended consistent roles within the Agile teams, a better way to manage lights-on support work, a centralized program management office for large programs, and an improved SDLC framework. A timeline with coaching support was agreed and formalized with the client. Our Lean process consultants then helped define consistent roles for scrum masters, product owners and cross-functional team members. Value-based delivery, capacity planning and sprint alignment became the core of the revised SDLC framework, and the organization quickly saw how cadence-based planning and delivery schedules minimized dependencies and improved feature delivery.
Although the teams were on Jira, they wanted a single execution tool covering build, code, deploy and release. Over the course of the engagement we helped the group migrate to Azure DevOps to manage the full lifecycle from concept to production, trained team members in the tool, and put team- and program-level dashboards in place to track progress.
The result
The new SDLC framework is now the consistent, value-focused standard across the technology organization. Revised job descriptions for Agile scrum masters and product owners were used to hire 18 new full-time employees. All work artifacts, including over 2,400 requirements, moved from Jira to Azure DevOps, with 15+ program-level dashboards used by technology and business teams. More than eight large programs have been delivered under the framework with iterative, incremental feature delivery, on the organization's first cadence-based block planning with six-week cycles from planning through deployment, under a customized scaling framework with aligned sprints and execution cycles. The organization continues to use the framework and refine it on feedback from internal leaders and our coaches.