10/20/09
Bhaven Sheth
Experience Report
This report shares the successful adoption of agile practices in redefining the support group in our IT Organization. The report includes a unique organization of a collaborative, team-based approach to handling support requests, benefits achieved, lessons learned, and the next steps towards continual improvements for the customer experience and excellence in software development & support. We describe how an organization can use an innovative approach to transform the culture and the effectiveness of the support organization from an operational cost center to a value-added thought partner.
This will primarily be a presentation session (with a supporting PowerPoint deck), with time for questions at the end (45 min) with the following organization:
▪ Present the challenges facing the organization (i.e. reduce support costs by 50% in 90 days) and its cultural impact to support and development
▪ Defining a new vision and goals for Support
▪ Discussion on multiple approaches taken (i.e. adoption of agile practices), how they were uniquely implemented, and re-implemented after learning
▪ Description of the benefits achieved, lessons learned and next steps
▪ Continuous Feedback from leadership, various groups within the IT Organization and end users
▪ Next Steps –Discussion on how to continue to use agile practices to improve the support organization, the customer experience and across organizations within the IT Group
▪ Q&A
Learning outcomes:
The participants will learn the benefits achieved from a collaborative, team based approach for the support organization
The participants will learn an alternative and innovative approach to organizing and running a support organization that returns its investment on both direct support costs, improved culture and improved development quality.
The participants will gain knowledge how to introduce collaboration, teamwork and agile principles to historical ticket processing, individualized support organization.
The participants will learn how to create an environment that fosters collaboration, growth and motivation for the staff in their support organization.
The participants will appreciate the importance of the support organization and begin to understand how to use it as a feedback mechanism to improved application supportability and stability.
The participants will learn how to implement and fine-tune the relevant elements of scrum to the support organization (daily stand up, retrospectives, sprint reviews, backlog for process improvements, monitoring and tracking of improvements).