The Challenge
The RSA Global Digital teams identified a need for efficiency improvements to get their digital services to market, aligned with enhancements in the quality of the final product delivery. Operating in a mixed environment, completing planned work as well as responding to unplanned events had its challenges for the teams, who provide the front-end development and maintenance services for RSA web services.
The teams encountered a number of challenges, including:
- Scheduling work items and responding to short term requests – balancing planned and reactive requirements
- A lack of transparency of ownership of work through to final delivery
- Work going unmanaged because not all work was visible
- Too much work in progress, for individuals and the teams
- A backlog of product items not well formed, visible, or an integral part of the delivery process
- Product quality was not consistent
The team needed to find a way of working to suit the environment, meet the demands of the business and be sustainable.
Our Approach
Initial engagement was focused on helping teams identify the challenges they face in the current ways of working. This was achieved by facilitating team workshops, where all team members stepped through the end-to-end process, identifying where they had significant challenges.
The outputs from the workshop were used to devise a bespoke training programme to focus on a common understanding of current tools and terminology, plus tools to model the process and identify areas for future improvement.
Follow-up on-site coaching helped the teams to put process improvement into action, address blockers and provide individual support.
Outcomes
This successful, focused and outcome-driven engagement delivered tangible outcomes, including:
- Teams invigorated and motivated to adopt and develop better practices.
- A common understanding of terms, tools and processes being used and why (their value).
- A sense of ownership for ongoing improvement to processes adopted within the team.
- Greater visibility of work being undertaken and managed.
- Emphasis on, and ownership of, delivering quality products. Improved time to market, driven by competitive advantage.
- Beginnings of cultural change by bringing business stakeholders and delivery teams into closer, collaborative working relationships.
