The client is a reputable school with around 1,000 employees in Australia. The incumbent Time & Attendance (T&A) system decided to retire its T&A solution and end support, effectively forcing the client to select and implement a new T&A system. The school had also historical T&A solutions in place tailored to it business needs that were in scope of being replaced by the new T&A solution. 

 

After supporting the client to select a solution that best fits their requirements and growth projection, we were engaged by the client to manage the implementation project. As part of the engagement, we delivered the following: 

 

• Delivered a structured project management capability to manage the project team and vendor, whilst identifying and managing project risks and issues. 

• Led the project team through discovery, award interpretation and configuration, integration implementation, and all phases of testing.  

• Thoroughly tested the configuration of the Teachers’ & Technicians’ EBA and the Educational Services (General Staff) client’s award interpretation. These awards contain multiple above-award payments and nuances with a heterogeneous scope of end users and usages (Nurses, Security, boarding house, etc.) 

• Managed vendor deployment and priorities to advocate the school's interests. 

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As a result of our support, the client realized the benefit of strict requirement traceability and rigorous testing, leading to an in-depth knowledge of their award interpretation. The school now has the capabilities required to deploy the new solution, and most importantly, assurance that employees are paid correctly. 

A healthcare company had trouble moving from an old Microsoft Access ERP system to a new bespoke cloud-based system. The new system had been in the works for over 5 years and was important for the company's compliance, risk management, and growth.

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AgileXperts was hired to make the transition easier. We created a plan to balance efficiency, risk management, and a smooth transition. We also provided project management, business advice, and procurement advice to the client.

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The transition was successful with our help. We improved the project processes, testing practices, and responsibilities to ensure success. Our team also solved delivery management issues and helped figure out the remaining work to complete the new ERP system. The client was able to replace their old system and meet their goals for compliance, risk management, and growth.

AgileXperts was engaged by one of the largest fast-food retail & hospitality organisations to complete an Agile Diagnostic Scan which focused on the corporate functions of the brand Australia wide. The organisation is focussed on managing franchises, and supporting restaurant operations, along with strong marketing. While 2020 was their most successful year ever, there was a desire to change, further innovate and increase organisational agility. COVID created the perfect storm for heightened success, but this also exposed the challenge and need to drive for change. The organisation had a habit of running many simultaneous business initiatives, each championed by different a different area.The challenge for the organisation was to work out how to deliver on all expectations with the high number of competing priorities. 

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The organisation and executive had a high desire for innovation, whilst at the same time there was a focus on structure and control. The Agile Diagnostic Scan results revealed there were core challenges with focus, and points of friction within rules & routines. The diagnostic scan also highlighted that while there was a desire and drive for greater innovation, this was creating friction and conflict within the organisation. The organisation was a rigid command-and-control driven organisation, where product and service quality and consistency is critical to their business model, but innovation by its definition requires a different form of management. 

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With limited time available from stakeholders to input into the diagnostic results and team workshops, virtual sessions workshops were held. AgileXperts’ Certified Diagnostic Mentor held briefing sessions to educate the executive leadership team on the results of the diagnostic scan and form an awareness of the current state situation and validate the future objectives to increase agility and innovation.  

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Following an executive briefing to present the diagnostic scan results, a team workshop was facilitated including all staff to examine the results and identify root causes behind friction points and impediments. From the team workshop, strategic initiatives were designed, developed and prioritised to enable monitoring of impacts of incremental experiments designed to improve innovation.  

The client is a high-level executive office of a medium-size city council that had been through significant staff changes. As a result, the executive office was struggling to proactively analyse and approve project documentation alongside their day-to-day team duties. Consequently, they were constantly behind on their schedule, which was negatively impacting the perception of their performance with other sectors of the council. 

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AgileXperts was engaged to analyse and help the office team improve the way they handle the scheduled and non-scheduled tasks, including the analysis and automation of some of their processes. As part of the engagement, we delivered the following: 

• Conducted a discovery phase to map the known processes, working backward from the scheduled tasks and documenting ad-hoc tasks as they were discovered, highlighting failures and inconsistencies. 

• Performed an analysis of possible solutions for managing and automating tasks, considering timelines and systems already available within the business. 

• Designed and built the solution and relevant automations, using an iterative approach with all parties involved.

 

As a result of AgileXperts’ support, the client has managed to understand and document their as-is business processes and better understand how more efficient they can be in the future (to-be process). The client also gained knowledge on the scope and span of dedicated systems and how to best leverage their capabilities. Using Agile techniques, AgileXperts worked closely with the team to design and build a custom solution that matches the client’s work transparency and business continuity goals, automating repetitive tasks to maximise the team’s capacity to produce value-add work. 

The client is a small accounting company and was facing challenges planning for the upcoming work and meeting their monthly billing targets.  

 

AgileXperts was engaged by the client to explore the Agile ways of working to improve their delivery approach and overall velocity. As part of the engagement AgileXperts delivered: 

• A framework tailored to the client’s needs that adopted the appropriate Agile practices including an Agile wall visualisation as well as the implementation of sprint planning, retrospectives, and stand-ups  

• An agreed transformation roadmap that empowered the teams to continually learn, experiment and develop their delivery approach 

• A review of end-to-end processes and documentation of current and target state processes 

• Identified and implemented automation of workflow and data management to improve visibility, flow of work and consistency of task information management 

• Live dashboards that would give the team immediate feedback on how they are tracking based on their planned work 

 

As a result of AgileXperts’ support, the client’s teams managed to go from achieving 70% of their billing targets to 110% on a regular basis. Regular planning cycles, dashboards and the team Agile walls also led to an increase in work visibility. This also resulted in an increase in intra and cross-team collaboration as team members were ensuring the highest priority item was always being worked on and could step in to assist with knowledge sharing to resolve the highlighted blockers more effectively. The teams also developed Agile transformation roadmaps which will provide goals and checkpoints, ensuring the client’s success and continuous improvement into the future. 

What could be harder than implementing a new Time and Attendance (T&A) solution for over 15,000 weekly paid employees in 850 locations across Australia? Implementing a new T&A solution for a large organisation with a complex structure, consisting of three distinct brands that were also in the midst of a merger.

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Each brand had their own distinct governance, communication channels, culture, and ways of working. The merger process involved increased centralisation of corporate services and related structural change. The first time that the three brands had worked on a project collectively, there was a disconnect in their approach to managing change. The Project Manager recognised the challenges of the complex structure, along with the impact of the added change and realised that expert help was needed. 

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A Change Xpert from AgileXperts was engaged to create a change management framework for the project. They formed a strong relationship with each brand to build an understanding of their specific needs and culture. A strategy was formed that supported the shared goals of the project, recognised the unique of each brand, and addressed the effect of the additional change impacts.

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Working with nominated Change Leads from each brand, it was agreed that while there were differences in the way engagement, communication, and training activities needed to be delivered, there was a common goal, and the same overall framework was appropriate. The change management plan was designed to ensure a consistent timeline, cohesive messaging, and change activities, while allowing flexibility for each to apply their own branding, common language, tools, and resources.

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AgileXperts empowered the change leads to confidently deliver change activities and work as a team. The client explicitly highlighted that the value AgileXperts provided was not just based on the Change Management strategy delivered, but the transfer of knowledge and capability uplift to their team and the support to develop a cohesive approach.

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A leading infrastructure company had attempted to realise value from its two year investment to adopt modern ways of working and continuous integration. The eight person team tasked with creating and implementing the change had been unable to define an effective vision and struggled to identify a clear path to the organisation's definition of success.

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AgileXperts were able to define and articulate a clear vision for the project by interaction with key stakeholders and implementing effective strategies within the team. 

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​AgileXperts experience in this field enabled the company to map the pieces of the continuous integration puzzle together, and to leverage modern ways of working with the existing team to deliver the minimum viable product within six months. The client ended up with a continuous integration and continuous deployment pipeline which leverages environments on demand. The team continues working together now as an example to the organisation of how an effective Agile Scrum team can work, and has gained praise from C-level executives for its motivation, velocity and agility.

The client is an international food and beverages conglomerate that is integrating a recently acquired Australian company into its business. The Australian company consists of 15+ breweries that all operated in isolation when it came to their business systems and processes which were, in many cases, not documented.

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AgileXperts was engaged by the client to establish a minimum standard of process consistency for each brewery and measure the compliance with the standard to enable future harmonisation. As part of the engagement we delivered the following:

• Established a base governance model, describing the minimum standard of processes, artefacts, evidence and structure which will provide assurance around issue and risk management;

• Conducted interviews, desk research and current state process mapping for every brewery to identify the gap between the base governance model and current way of operating; and

• Developed a plan to close the identified compliance gaps by implementing the base governance model at the various breweries.
   

To mitigate regulatory and compliance risks within each organisation, as well as to improve the overall business efficiencies, a Base Governance Model (BGM) was developed and extensive site surveys were completed as part of our engagement. The model defined the minimum requirements in terms of processes, artefacts, structure and governance mechanisms needed to provide assurance around identified risks and issues inherent within the Australian company and to meet regulatory compliance. The BGM identified key areas that needed to be addressed.

 

Our engagement has enabled the client to agree a future business governance model and high-level processes for all its merged businesses, which will accelerate compliance interventions for current and future acquisitions. As a result of our detailed site surveys and Base Governance Model, the client now understands the compliance risk profiles of all 15+ breweries, along with self-nominated corrective measures.

The client is a major player in the fast-food industry with over 30.000 employees in Australia. The client had selected a new digital health and safety management system to roll out to all its restaurants nationally as part of a push to increase employee wellbeing and safety. In the early phases of the project, the project faced delays and quality issues.

 

AgileXperts was engaged by the client midway into the project to ensure the successful adoption of the system across all restaurants. As part of the engagement, we delivered the following:

• Delivered a structured project management capability to manage the project team and vendor, whilst identifying and managing project risks and issues.

• Conducted a successful pilot with 40 restaurants across multiple franchise organisations.

• Managed the national rollout of the system to ~700 restaurants, impacting ~30.000 employees.

• Designed and implemented the operational processes to manage system support and ongoing releases.

• Introduced agile project management to address observed issues in the earlier phases of the project.

 

As a result of AgileXperts’ support, the client managed to get the project back on track and deliver all the key project milestones on time, on budget and on quality. By successfully introducing agile project management and taking the team on the journey, AgileXperts has improved the project management maturity of the client and set a new standard for project delivery.

We all know culture can be one of the biggest barriers to change and innovation. We work with our clients to find the little things you can do every day to create positive, iterative and sustainable change.

 

We worked with the team to develop a list of ideas that could lead to innovation. They were asked to come up with an idea or problem statement that they would like to have a ‘hack’ at. The week before the big day, the group came together to pitch their ideas, vote on what they would work on and form teams. It gave them an opportunity to explore new ideas and work with people that they wouldn’t normally work with.

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The objective of the day was simple. It was about unpacking the idea and potential approach to developing working code/final product and not necessarily completing a prototype or working code…

 

They started the morning with four teams and by lunchtime they had reorganised into the three teams after one of the teams reached the conclusion that their original idea wasn’t workable.

 

By the end of the day, the teams managed to achieve more than defining a potential approach, they were presenting working prototypes. The final prototypes have been included in the innovation backlog to be developed into their production products.  

 

The group found the process liberating. Out of their ‘normal’ environment and processes, they were able to explore and try daring ideas in a safe, no risk way. The unilateral feedback from the teams was how much they achieved in a six-hour period.

 

We are now working with this team to integrate innovation hackathons into their regular rhythm of business.

When teams start to adopt Agile ways of working, more often than not, working through the changes in team dynamics gets lost in the sea of post-it notes, sharpies and Kanban boards. Drawing inspiration from the Force, we worked with this team to hack their culture and put their people at the centre of their Agile journey.

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Involving people in the creation of their own destiny is by far the most effective way to ensure that they’re engaged. Riders&Elephants Founder Jeremy Dean sums it up perfectly when he said “Most organisations and leaders don’t pay enough attention to how employees are or should be feeling. They underestimate how central emotions are to building the right culture and employee experiences.”

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A typical approach to leadership and culture blueprints wasn’t going to cut it for this team. One thing that we did know: the Force is strong with them. Mapping traditional leadership concepts to the ways of the Jedi was a natural way to start a conversation about how we wanted to work together.

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We went on the three-part journey of defining how the leadership team wanted their people to feel at work and what types of things they would see and hear if people were feeling engaged and inspired or overwhelmed.  We then worked with the broader team to unpack what they thought was important to feel and do. Bringing it all together with the leadership team we defined their own Jedi Code and agreed on a few rituals to encourage everyone to be one with the Force and limit the temptation to go to the Dark side.

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Since the Code was launched, the whole team is engaging in conversations and bringing it back to the Code is helping them to bolster a culture of inspiration and innovation.

AgileXperts was engaged by one of the largest fast-food retail and hospitality organisations to complete a Management Diagnostic Scan which focused on the corporate functions of the brand Australia wide. The organisation is focussed on managing franchises, and supporting restaurant operations, along with strong marketing.

AgileXperts’ Certified Diagnostic Mentor held a briefing session to educate the executive leadership team on the results of the diagnostic scan.  This created an awareness of the current state of culture, and validate the future objectives to increase agility and innovation.

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A team workshop was then facilitated including all staff to examine the results and identify root causes behind friction points and impediments. From the team workshop, strategic initiatives were designed and prioritised to enable monitoring of impacts of incremental experiments.

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AgileXperts worked with cross-functional “business as usual teams” project teams and key members of the executive leadership team, agreeing a roadmap of prioritised targeted initiatives (Strategic, tactical and common).

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Phase 1 initiatives focussed on enabling and creating motivation to do more, followed by Team level interventions (implementation of agile ways of working). Through these initiatives the organisation redefined the how they used tools to be enablers rather than constraints, and created foundational understanding of processes, roles and responsibilities across teams.  AgileXperts’ Diagnostic Mentor provided mentoring and coaching to executives and teams, developed and matured corporate operations frameworks and refined the approach to communications, the use of tools and initiative/project delivery.

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AgileXperts created a supporting toolkit to enable continuity of this work across the business and to enhance clarity.  We also developed flexible ways of working guidance materials/toolkit which helped to embed the change.  The engagement delivered ongoing incremental improvements across governance, risk management, performance feedback, processes, roles and responsibilities.