AgileManufacturingProcessOptimisation
“We were being told internally that a lot of the problems in the process were corrected but what Planit showed us was that collective ownership of quality was just not happening. Planit helped us go straight to the root-cause of many chronic issues.”
Neil KinnardHead of ICT, Lendlease
Lendlease is a listed property group specialising in project management and construction, real estate investment and development. The Lendlease ICT Group (Australia) provide systems and software to the Lend Lease business and provide technical resources and specialists for a range of desktop applications and national and international web-site projects including e-Finance solutions, HR and payroll and project management.
Lend Lease engaged Planit to undertake an Agile Test Process Improvement Review to enable them to transform their current organisational practices from traditional to Agile, drawing on Planit’s experience as a recognised industry leader in software testing.
Most projects currently were delivered using a Waterfall method and all had the same challenges of not being able to fit the right amount of testing into the delivery schedule. Projects were not able to react to late changes found during Acceptance Testing with the business resulting in frustrations being suffered by the stakeholders as they thought ICT unresponsive.
Typically deliverables into production had severe defects released because of the twin problems above, resulting in projects getting out of control late in the delivery timeline. This then had a negative impact on Business As Usual teams who had to deal with abnormal levels of defects and code which was different to maintain. Plus the cost of quality was significantly increased as fixes whilst in production are considerably more expensive than those found and resolved early by the project team.
It was clear that not only was more targeted testing required, but also the ICT Group could not afford to wait until Acceptance Testing before finding out if the Business outcomes were achieved and the software benefits realised.
“We knew we wanted to go Agile, but did not have the expertise in-house to devise a strategy for testing nor capability to implement it. Planit came in and offered to deliver all this without disrupting our in-flight projects.”
As time-to-market business cycles are shortening across the economy, Lendlease was experiencing a growing appetite for more agility in the business whilst a tough economic climate dictated doing more with less.
Adopting Agile processes was seen as the way forward but how to get there was not as easy as it looked.
Lendlease had already brought in certified Scrum Masters to bootstrap the transition to using Agile on projects, but progress was inconsistent and depended on too many individual factors. More was needed to get a deeper understanding of the testing capabilities and a set of proven initiatives to transform the process.
Improvement roadmap to enable a change from Waterfall to Agile delivery.
Assessment of Agile maturity across testing and the organisation, together with recommendations.
Targeted Agile training and coaching to enable staff to implement agile testing processes.
Planit were engaged as an independent consultant to evaluate existing practices and provide an assessment of the current testing capability. Included would be a roadmap for how Lendlease could transform their test processes to become more Agile.
Planit used their Agile Test Process Improvement toolkit to interview key members of staff who participated in the delivery of projects and classify their answers on a maturity scale. With a comprehensive set of answers from a range of stakeholders, it was possible to assess the application of Agile practices in each of the key quality process areas and to map the current Lendlease Agile test capability against industry best practice.
Planit currently is the only consultancy that has a formal process for Agile Test Process Improvement. It provides a clear and methodical way to assess test processes against Agile practices and to choose the focus areas for any improvement initiative, which also includes uplifting the overall team quality.
The primary goal of the process was to provide Lendlease with a programme of short, medium and long-term objectives to improve the current test process, increasing its effectiveness and efficiency.
By using Planit, Lendlease were able to understand their existing test process in detail and the current pain points based on independent evidence gathered by Planit. This not only helped Lendlease ICT prepare for future projects but to ensure the appropriate corrective actions were taken in current projects.
Key amongst the improvement plan were the delivery of tailored templates for the common Agile testing deliverables, a Testing Centre-of-Excellence including being fully documented on SharePoint and coaching/training sessions for Lend Lease staff on Agile Testing.
Understanding how the testing process fits into the overall project framework and what the key commercial drivers and dependencies are, allowed Planit to tailor a bespoke process to Lendlease’s needs that is monitored for improvement on a continual basis.
After the initial meetings, Planit came up and ratified with Lendlease the focus areas for investigation that would form the main work for the test process initiative:
In addition to conducting interviews with key stakeholders, Planit reviewed the current process documentation, test artefacts and work product templates. Planit also facilitated retrospectives for projects that had recently delivered, which gave them valuable insight into project constraints and challenges.
The key deliverable from Planit was a roadmap of improvements driven through the Lendlease change management programme. This took the form of a recommendation report plus presentations to key stakeholders. Plus some targeted training and coaching.
The main recommendations were:
Lendlease were exceptionally pleased with the outcome of the Agile Test Process Improvement exercise. As a result of this, Planit will provide test process consultancy and testing services across all projects.
Using their Agile Test Process Improvement product, Planit were able to quickly determine the organisational and testing process maturity in terms of how well Agile practices were being implemented at Lendlease. The report presented this as a measure against industry best practice which will allow Lend Lease to closely monitor their improvements progress against investment. This allowed Planit to determine a credible and achievable roadmap to enable Lendlease in partnership with Planit, to transform their current waterfall approach into a robust Agile methodology by targeting key areas in the overall SDLC process.
We use cookies to optimise our site and deliver the best experience. By continuing to use this site, you agree to our use of cookies. Please read our Cookie Policy for more information or to update your cookie settings.
