Capita is a Professional Services outsourcing company.  This project was specifically for the SIMS business unit which focused on the provision of Management Information software to around 22,000 schools and over 1m users in the UK.

The internal existing team was made up of around 20 full stack C#, Javascript, MS SQL developers.  There was also an outsourced, offshore team developing elements of the project. The BA, QA, and PM resources were available as part of an internal matrixed structure.

The project to re-engineer the existing client/server system, replacing it with a greenfield, Azure hosted, SaaS platform  had already been underway for 3 months.  Unfortunately, things had fallen behind schedule, the Agile practices that had been put in place were not being adhered to by the teams and it was felt that there was no one internally that had the required Agile transformation experience to deliver this project.  Additionally, there was a lack of cohesion between the internal engineering resource and the offshore engineering team.

The SIMS business unit had not previously worked with an offshore engineering team and needed additional guidance to make this work.

2.5 year assignment as UK Development Manager tasked with  getting the SIMS project back on track and installing Agile best practice.

• Created a skills matrix to assess incumbent engineering team and conducted similar assessment on existing offshore resource
• Arranged meetings with all internal and offshore key stakeholders to identify problem areas and pain points
• Mentored existing Team Leads on their journey to become Scrum Masters and conducted training sessions with both them and their teams
• Moved all BA resources to the UK to ensure they were closer to the existing Product Management function
• Travelled to India to meet with offshore teams and conduct training on Agile/Scrum methodologies and to instill a sense of empowerment and ownership
• Leveraged my resourcing network to source additional UK contractors to assist in delivery
• Assisted in the creation of a new DevOps function, advising on tooling, hiring, and best practice