Background
The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) manages the planning of Victoria, including zoning, land use, and development. The policies and plans of the Department have a significant effect on how Victoria will grow in the decades to come.
Greater Connection Needed Between Stakeholders and Software Development
Many digital initiatives were underway, with a significant amount of money spent. Stakeholders were having difficulty tracing the amount of money spent to the software being developed.
The Solution – A New Culture of Customer Service and Consistent Delivery.
Customer Service
First, we changed the mindset of technology delivery. The delivery team started treating the Department Planners, their key stakeholders, as customers. The business analysts, developers, and testers started interacting with the Planning Manager as they would with a customer of their own business. This improved the relationship with stakeholders and ensured the Planners’ priorities were the same as the technologists’.
Consistent Delivery
Second, we established a regular and efficient agile delivery routine. Most of the team had previously worked in some sort of agile operation. However, the user stories were inconsistent in their content, the scrum meetings were long (up to an hour each day) and the sprint backlog items would regularly carry over into the next sprint. We introduced new simplicity, including:
- A consistent format for product backlog items, including a ‘Definition of Ready’ and ‘Definition of Done’.
- Short, focused daily scrum meetings of 15 minutes (“What did you do yesterday? What will you do today? Any blockers?”)
- Accurate sprint planning to ensure 100% of the sprint commitment is delivered each and every sprint
Results
The Planning stakeholders, represented by the Product Owner, gained much more visibility and confidence in the delivery process. The complete delivery (with no “spillover”) each fortnight was consistent, and stakeholders knew the efforts of the delivery team aligned with the Department’s priorities.
