Our Work
Delivering your vision
Investors in People
Coaching Investors in People in agile project delivery and stabilising their digital platform
Services
Since 1991, Investors in People has set the standard for better people management. Their internationally recognised accreditation is held by 14,000 organisations across the world. The standard defines what it takes to lead, support and manage people well for sustainable results.
Investors in People offers an innovative online assessment platform for the new version of their standard. Cameron & Wilding has been providing support by identifying bugs and helping stabilise the platform, transitioning to a fully lean and agile organisation and creating new digital products for the future.
The Challenge
Our initial challenge was to improve the stability of the platform, train Investors in People staff to take up the product owner role and support them as they transition to an agile mindset. The digital assessment and results analysis platform is based on Drupal 7 using an array of state of the art modules from Drupal's ecosystem.
Investors in People wanted to support and stabilise the existing platform and iteratively add new functionality. This is naturally where an agile development process really shines and it became apparent that software quality and organisational agility play really well together.
The development team, scrum master and product owner were distributed across several geographical locations and so needed to collaborate remotely.
The Solution
We did not have one solution to fit all problems. Our approach was to spend a couple of weeks on the discovery phase and then report back key findings with senior stakeholders. Our aim was to have complete buy-in with stakeholders because experience has taught us that this is the most important trait for an organisation moving to an agile mindset.
Our findings suggested improvements in three main areas:
- Communication between the team
- Clarity of roles and responsibilities
- Project delivery (scrum, development best practices).
Several months into the project, the results we have so far are:
- A steep decline in bugs per month
- A fully functioning Product Owner and other staff trained in supportive roles
- An engaged development team providing insights, experience and expertise in all aspects of the project not just development
- Iteratively delivering new functionality in half the time.
What once started as an experiment for Investors in People is now scheduled to scale up within the organisation. They aim to be a completely lean and agile organisation moving forwards delivering high quality new products. As for Cameron & Wilding, we are looking forward to providing support to Investors in People in extending the platform with a new generation of digital products.
IIP
Thomas Bale, Head of Marketing & Customer Development
Cameron & Wilding has had a transformational impact on the productivity, value for money and delivery of our web development team. We now have more visibility of the development lifecycle, can manage risk more effectively and are delivering functionality to clients faster and smarter.
The Key Benefits
The main benefits of this new system include the strength of the relationship that has been built between Cameron & Wilding, Investors in People and its contractors which means that we are able to suggest new technology products across the organisation. Other benefits include:
- Stabilised delivery system for implementation of the Investors in People standard
- Allows Investors in People to be more independent on delivery and functionality
- Gives Investors in People the ability to scale projects more quickly
- Development of a new role within the organisation, the Product Owner
- New use of user stories to describe functionality with acceptance criteria
- Delivery of software running iterative scrum sprints
- Ability to leverage the experience and expertise of the development team
