How We Helped An Agency Expand Product Capabilities from 22 to 315 Locations in Just 9 Months
The Situation
The client, a hybrid public sector enterprise with specialist contractors, had not delivered any product solutions – beyond
urgent hot fixes – in several years. They were managing work through a spreadsheet, as they felt that other tools were an
overkill. In the leadership team’s biweekly status meetings, this group never had anything to report, and were constantly
criticized for it.
The Task
This group needed to deliver – and fast. They were failing to deliver feature sets, and some modules had been in the queue for years. Leadership was getting very impatient, and needed to see results. Team morale, of course, was very low. On the other hand, their resistance to change was quite high.
The Action / Approach
We recognized that this group needed a revamp of the way they approached their work. We encouraged them to let us help them change how they worked, and introduced them to Scrum. They were very hesitant to try something new. We asked them to give us 3 months, and if the experiment wasn’t successful at the end of that time, we would put the spreadsheet back in place.
We created a backlog of priority items, decided on two week sprints, and began generating completed work product every two weeks. We strategically scheduled the Sprint Review the day before the leadership meeting. At every meeting, they now had actions and results to report.
The Result
3 MONTHS – New Module
In three months, the team was able to build a brand new module for the product that had been sitting in queue for years.
6 MONTHS – FULL RELEASE WITH INFRASTRUCTURE REHAUL
Six months in, the team completed a full feature set release of the product, including an infrastructure overhaul.
9 MONTHS – PRODUCT CAPABILITY EXPANSION
With our help, they also expanded product capabilities from 22 to 315 locations nationwide in the US in 9 months.
