Building based on user needs, in half the time

Birmingham Airport wanted to create a new website to replace their existing site, which was not optimised for mobile and which was not easy to update or manage day to day. The original scope was planned over a 6 month development period with one month user acceptance testing before going live. Prior to starting the project, the development scope was reduced to 3 months by the client, in order to get the site live sooner than planned.

A delivery lead, I was tasked with delivering the site in half the time originally planned.

• Switching to an agile delivery model – formed a small, co-located team to work together for the first time and for some in a new location. Introduction of daily stand ups, shared task board and online messaging tools to help facilitate better team communication.

• Collaborative planning – worked with UX Specialist to convert requirements into user stories, and from that formed the backlog of tasks, which were then prioritised by the client.

• Stakeholder management – ran weekly status sessions with stakeholders and their project management teams in another location, and ensured they had access to shared communication tools so they could monitor progress of the project. Developed a live support model with the client.

• Transparency – introduced risk reports for the benefit of stakeholders, and reviewed each sprint, to promote an open and honest working relationship

• Transformation – coached and mentored the team to work collaboratively, to help with their transition to agile

• Continuous integration – Introduced and defined the concept of a minimal viable product, and ensured we deployed working software to the client every sprint.

• Training – Ran ongoing training sessions with the client as new features were release, so they were able to learn the system as it developed.

• Goal oriented development – worked with the client during the project inception to define a set of KPIs that would help us to measure success once the site was live (this was something they hadn’t already considered)

• Knowledge transfer – liaised with client PM team, coaching and sharing knowledge on agile process and the build of the system

• Wider engagement and integration – from the outset, liaised with third party suppliers for flight information integration, car park and car hire booking integration, and destination information content suppliers, to manage expectations of how the transition would play out. Worked closely with cloud hosts to manage the transition from old site to new.

The project went into UAT phase after just 13 weeks of development, with a live launch 2 months ahead of original project schedule. Three months after launch, bounce rates were down by 35% overall, (50% on mobile alone), page views increased by 48%, and dwell times almost doubled. The success of this project led to winning the work to redevelop another airport website.