When Alison’s company decided to implement agile principles across the whole organisation, there was uncertainty over how this would work in operational teams. Agile had its origins in software development, where it had been effectively used to rapidly deliver software in quick iterations. How would this work in a continuous operating environment? QBS’s Core Operational Excellence leadership development program gave Alison the frameworks to solve this, paving the way for successful Operational Excellence and Agile Integration.

The Issues

Alison was able to leverage the Core Operational Excellence program to identify some key pain points that she could address with an Operational Excellence and Agile Integration:

• Large customer deliverables were managed in an inflexible ‘waterfall’ approach
• Negative customer sentiment towards time and cost to build new system requirements
• Low visibility of team workload
• Poor visibility of current work status and process performance
• Single points of failure exacerbated by gaps in process documentation

Actions Taken

With her team, Alison systematically tackled these pain points with some key actions:

• Addressed process vulnerabilities in a Confluence knowledge base – a one-stop shop for the team
• Increased cross-skilling and improved capacity utilisation
• Chunked down customer deliverables into smaller deliverables measured as agile storyboard points and managed in sprints
• Increased visibility of workload using a Kanban board
• Established shared workload management meetings with a joint Jira board
• Created dashboards to give visibility on status and performance

The Results

The results that Alison achieved within seven months are impressive and demonstrate the tangible benefits of Operational Excellence and Agile Integration:

• Annual OPEX saving of $429k with a different approach to workload management
• Further 1 FTE saving while managing a 30% increase in workload
• Double the number of new requirements delivered to customers in the same amount of time (100% productivity gain)
• More consistent customer experience – approximately 75% reduction in customer issues
• Greater collaboration between teams and different areas of the business
• 100% of key roles have succession plans

Her team are now working smarter, not harder, but the journey does not end here for Alison and the team. They now have a different way of looking at their operation and the mindset to improve!

Operational Excellence and Agile Integration in Your Organisation

If you and your leaders would like to sustainably solve your own operational challenges, start here to learn more about Core Operational Excellence and QBS’s other development programs.