Case Study: Defining an Adaptive Delivery Roadmap to Mobilise an Agile Team

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Our client, based within the UK Government sector, asked us to provide the groundwork needed to quickly mobilise an agile team. They were preparing an ambitious change initiative which aimed to deliver technology advice across several governmental departments and needed to hit the ground running.

MIGSO-PCUBED devised an Adaptive Roadmap and prioritised their plans to ensure they would accelerate their mobilisation and deliver achievable goals. In a focused 3-week period of consultation, we helped our client to build the adaptive roadmap needed to launch their team quickly and deliver successfully.

3 steps for Rapid Mobilisation
Three Steps to Mobilisation in Three Weeks

Week 1 - Backlog Review

In the first week, our first goal was to refine and prioritise the existing backlog of ideas, carefully balancing the importance of these initiatives against the resources the team had to deliver them.

To get an appreciation of the scale of the backlog we facilitated a high-level t-shirt sizing exercise based on the estimated levels of size, complexity and cost relative to each other

By doing this, we produced a clear picture of the next 12 months’ key focus areas, providing the client with the foundations to mobilise an agile team quickly.

Adding Value

As part of this process of mobilisation, we also had the opportunity to provide our client with additional value, beyond the scope of the project.

We noticed that the existing backlog of ideas was not well defined, meaning that it was not always clear what benefits each initiative would bring. Naturally, it’s important to know the true value of an idea before trying to judge whether it should have a higher priority than another, if you don’t know, you run the risk of prioritising the wrong thing, leaving important projects to languish.

We took the time to clarify and refine these value statements, making sure that the benefits of the ideas were clear. This left the client with a much more well-defined backlog, more accurate prioritisation and clear view of quick wins, ensuring they would be able to realise value sooner.

Week 2 - Gap Analysis, and an important realisation

With a backlog the client was happy with, we performed a gap analysis of their internal resource capabilities. This analysis takes a view of what the client wants to achieve and compares it with the resources they actually have.

The gap analysis allowed us to forecast the team’s resourcing requirements, something which turned out to be critical for the team. Confronted with the resourcing requirements, the client realised they had underestimated the necessary skills and experience required to launch their team and deliver the intended benefits successfully.

Week 3 - Prioritisation and Adaptive Roadmap

Once the client’s expectations had been readjusted, they were left with a more accurate, adaptive and achievable roadmap for the next 12 months. This adaptive roadmap is flexible enough to accommodate changing business priorities at short-notice, without impacting overall progress.

To support this more agile method of prioritising work, we also made a suite of recommendations for the setup of their team, including:

Our recommendations for Rapid Mobilisation

Our Recommendations for Rapid Mobilisation

Results

The client was impressed at the pace we were able to come in and shape the team’s roadmap.  

Together, we were able to help our client move from a place of uncertainty to security, giving them a conceptual plan based on careful analysis and an insight-driven prioritisation of their backlog.

Despite their limited experience in mobilising agile backlogs, the client now has a best-practice process to kick-off initiatives like this in the future.

Today, the client has a more firmly defined change initiative, are ready to commit to budgetary decisions and communicate the change to key stakeholders and users.

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