Overview
Managing and communicating the state of project work across both Software Development and IT teams are critical within an organization. However, as many companies emphasize transparency within these functions, the ability to provide real-time visibility to other business functions and management is often an afterthought. Our client, a mid-sized bank with locations across the U.S., needed to tighten up planning and execution of their software development and IT operations projects, as well as provide insights available in real-time to other business teams. This required tools and processes to enable visibility and tracking. Working with our team, our client got exactly what they needed to manage Agile and Waterfall projects across teams and business verticals.
THE CHALLENGE
Previously tracking projects in Excel Spreadsheets, our client needed our assistance in developing software development and IT operations projects inside tools that provided both real-time visibility as well as supporting both Agile and Waterfall processes used by their teams. In particular, our client looked to us for recommendations and best practices around Agile software development to better manage projects with sprints- something not possible or practical using Excel Spreadsheets. The amount of manual entry, lack of versioning, and reporting limitations our client experienced using Excel Spreadsheets was incredibly costly in terms of time and resources. Without Agile or Kanban boards, determining the status and estimated delivery date of projects was cumbersome- if not impossible. Our client felt this burden, as they were unable to effectively plan for releases and manage resources to hit deadlines without overloading certain people (which resulted in bottlenecks). In order to reach a level of maturity in their software development and IT operations, our client required our help to map best-in-class frameworks and methodologies to Jira Software.
THE SOLUTION
Leveraging our implementation methodology, our team worked with client subject matter experts to define and build the methods for the buildout of Jira Software, providing process consulting to ensure the codification of best practices reflected in JIRA. A major issue expressed by the client was their lack of visibility into the workload and status of IT and development projects. Creating these projects inside Jira Software where they were easily viewed and managed in boards by not only team members, but also management, provided this real-time visibility. Furthermore, by configuring Jira to support Agile and Waterfall best practices, teams gained a powerful tool that enables the proper management and tracking of their work without all the manual inputs previously required by their old spreadsheet model. Excited to begin their Agile journey in earnest, now with a tool to support them, we helped our client take significant steps to do effective estimation, capacity management, and performance tracking utilizing the outputs from Jira. For their IT Ops team, we enhanced communication of resource capacity, as well as Kanban best practices to control their amount of WIP (Work In Progress). Capping off our successful implementation of Jira Software for Agile SDLC and Waterfall project management, we helped our client encourage adoption of their new tools and best practices by providing training on Atlassian tools and the Agile methodology.
THE RESULTS
The work we did for our client empowered them to fully adopt best-in-class project management leveraging Agile SDLC and Waterfall frameworks. With Jira Software, formerly manual, often inaccurate inputs became automated and streamlined for easy reporting and increased visibility. Our client gained the ability to effectively manage resources, estimate project releases, and track project performance in real-time, allowing them to be more agile in their software development and more consistent in the delivery of their technology projects and practices. Business functions outside of software development and IT now have insight into the state of projects to help them better plan and manage these initiatives alongside the others for their company. In delivering project management capabilities leveraging Agile, Waterfall, and reflected in Jira Software, we helped our client further mature their development and IT capabilities.
Learn how we helped a national, mid-sized bank tighten up planning and execution of their software development and IT operations projects, as well as provide insights available in real-time to other business teams.
