The Accelerated Capability Environment (ACE) is the UK Government Framework to solve fast changing digital and technological challenges facing national security agencies.   ACE brings together expertise from industry to innovate collaboratively and deliver front-line mission impact at pace. The environment was highly politically charged, necessitating rapid solutions and answers to life saving critical situations.

Due to Covid restrictions staff were dispersed and home working.

Requirement was to consult, advise, coach and lead the Joint BioSecurity Centre (JBC) on how to develop a strategy to assess requirements and scope, map Value Streams and plan the necessary work. Also outline and cohere the relationship with the Test and Trace Service given the interdependencies and necessity for swift exchanges of information, decisions and reporting.

Provided support, advice and coaching on Agile, P3M, SAFe® and Scrum techniques.  Advised on governance and project delivery.

Established links between the JBC team, other suppliers, the client assigned PMO supplier and project controls team in support of communications with stakeholders.  Planned and established a system to keep all stakeholders appraised and to support the methods of planning to enable effective business transformation to the new service.

Assessed the maturity of the team and organisation and coached to higher levels of maturity.

Facilitated getting the essential planning done remotely and coached participants on use of the tools.

Facilitated discussions and decision making during the planning process.

Ensured internal and external communication, whilst improving transparency and sharing of information – ‘shared consciousness’.

Supported and educated the Product Owners and Managers on creating and maintaining backlogs for Features and User Stories.

Replace this leading sentence with an intro into the things you did, if relevant including re-written versions of the bulleted lines below:

• What did you do to help… Guided to a greater position of influence supported by improved sponsorship
• What did you do to help… Identified critical areas of value and opportunities to exploit them
• What did you do to help… Enhanced business capability through resilience, agility and adaptability
• What did you do to help… Nurture a culture of engaged people, delivery and achievement
• What did you do to help… Refined definition of current state, desired future state, and how to get there
• What did you do to help… Facilitate better alignment to business strategy and plan

• What did you do to help… Effectively manage scope creep
• What did you do to help… Reduce complexity and create simplicity
• What did you do to help… Reduce the impact of siloes
• What did you do to help… Reduce risk of delivering incompatible or incomplete solutions
• What did you do to help… Reduce time wasted to deliver value, with prioritised delivery of the right things at the right time
• What did you do to help… Reduce effect of detractors

Facilitated a full Programme Increment (PI) planning event remotely using Microsoft Teams and using a programme board format on a web tool with the following outcomes:

Teams and Programme Boards

Time boxes (iterations/sprints)

Features

Risks, 

Assumptions

Issues

Dependencies

Workflow (Value Stream)

Impediments

Direct feedback from the ACE Director was “there is no way we could have achieved this much in such a short space of time.  We should be doing all Government programme planning this way”

Replace this leading sentence with an intro into the things you did, if relevant including re-written versions of the bulleted lines below:

Typical areas where value is realised:

• What did you do to help… Increased credibility, confidence and influence across the business
• What did you do to help… Creating a culture of involvement, empowerment and connection to the business
• What did you do to help… Improved business agility and ability to rapidly respond to change and opportunity
• What did you do to help… Digital transformation that drives, moves and resets the organisation’s vision
• What did you do to help… Enabling collaboration beyond the boundaries of an enterprise
• What did you do to help… More satisfied and engaged employees with increased retention and productivity
• What did you do to help… Effective delivery against financial targets
• What did you do to help… Direct positive impact on internal and external customer satisfaction
• What did you do to help… Successful, timely delivery of evidence-based digital transformational outcomes; beyond digitisation

Pains typically relieved include:

• What did you do to help… Lack of availability of the right people at the right time across both business and technology areas
• What did you do to help… Lack of agreement of transformation governance and stakeholder understanding leading to a fragmented approach
• What did you do to help… Lack of process and technical integration strategy making the overall solution less efficient
• What did you do to help… Lack of transformation, change and agility mindset in leadership
• What did you do to help… Lack of exec sponsorship and ownership
• What did you do to help… Leaders mandating a change management and implementation approach that’s not appropriate to the organisation
• What did you do to help… Lack of clarity around existing operating model, internal business ecosystem or cross-functional teams
• What did you do to help… Unclear and siloed business strategy leading to misaligned goals across the organisation that conflict with transformation
• What did you do to help… Budget availability affected by external change drivers and uncertain resource estimates
• What did you do to help… Cynicism, lack of buy-in and resistance to change
• What did you do to help… Conflict between perception and reality of digital skills, tools, methods and talent required and available

• Organisational Agility & Effectiveness

• Government and Public Services