Question

the assigned Case: "Pearson's SuccessMaker: Putting the Customer First in Transforming Product Development Processes" by Raghu, and Sellman.

SHOULD BE IN A NARRATIVE FORMAT.

1.) What challenges does Adams-Woodford face as he develops his five-year product roadmap?

2.) What benefits did Pearson realize in making the shift from a waterfall process to an Agile one? What downsides might be associated with this shift? What first or market circumstances are more likely to benefit from a Waterfall or Agile methodology?

3.) What are some of the things Greg should consider as he evaluates whether to continue to focus on the SuccessMaker peoduce versus becoming involved in a company-wide Agile initiative? Which approach should Greg pursue? How might he optimize this approach?

4.) Within the SuccessMaker team, should Greg agree to follow the recommendations from his developersto move from Scrum to Kanban? Should he also push to move all the remaining teams (the content/curriculum team) to Scrum or Kanban? What metrics should he use to evaluate his decisions?

5.) Based on your reading in Chapter 6 - what technique would you suggest to utilize for Project Estimation? There is no right or wrong answer here, I am interested in you developing a position and defending why this estimation technique is appropriate for the Case.

Answer 1

1. When Adams-Woodford joined Pearson, the organization was following waterfall approach. Adams,had a good experience working in the agile methodology and wanted to bring the agile approach at Pearson as well.He faced lots of challenges as he developed his five-year product roadmap. Some of the challengesare stated as below – When Adams joined Pearson, development team was following waterfall methodology.

Waterfall process required Pearson to make multi-year commitment to implement features andwere often scoped out.

Development teams were driving the product decisions rather than the product owner or the product management team.

There was little to no communication between development team and the customers, resulting inthe product with unmet requirements.

Adams decided to implement agile methodology to overcome the declining demand of Pearson’sproducts.

Development team was having hard time getting used to agile methodology and implementing scrum technique.

With continued effort of Adams, development team started working in agile environment butwere often switching back to their waterfall process as needed.

Different sales report data showed that the sales raised initially after agile implementation butstarted declining back with teams introducing waterfall processes in between.

With the numbers in hand, the influential team members from high up management, suggestedthe use of Kanban system over scrum.

Kanban was focused over individual task management whereas, Scrum involves short development cycles called sprints and include whole set of tasks.

During recession time in the United States, the economic growth continued to decline and hence cutting down the education budgets.

technological changes were considered as a huge risk across all the divisions of product lines andservices.

Waterfall methodology also had a drawback of requirements getting finalized and a freeze holdbeing placed at the beginning itself.

a.Need for changing of software development process: The waterfall process relies on heavy documentation. Software is developed off-shore, resulting in miscommunication between development teams. By using this process, it is difficult to adjust specifications or features of softwares after the design process is finished. Moreover, the waterfall process is costly, and requires a lot of time to develop a software.

•After introduction of Agile methodology to the development of SuccessMaker Woodford faced a problem that the rest of the teams and functions within Pearson are still using old methodologies, which occasionally resulted in clashes between the old system teams and new system teams. This problem hindered the perceived benefits of introducing the Agile methodology. Thus for the next 5 years he needs to bring the organizational culture and structure under common denominator be it the Agile methodology or any other, otherwise the overall benefit of the new systems will be lost.

•Implementation of new system: To implement Agile software methodologies, Greg has to put more effort than just to change a system. This implementation requires him to change organizational structures and cultures. Offshore software development has to be ceased and promote more face-to-face communication among teams. Greg also probably receives negative feedbacks from this change. Some staff may be confused, thus unhappy with his/her new roles and resist to change.

2. The Agile process allows for an incremental design process. The waterfall process would require each step to be completed individually and they could not go back once the step was completed with restarting the entire thing.

· Following the principle for teams to be co-located in agile, Adams-Woodford reduced the offshore presence which had fostered miscommunication in the past. If new functionalities were presented to the team, it was sometimes turned down as scope creep. This was reduced after an assimilated team which was co-located.

· Product management owned the product after shifting to Agile. This gave the product team more autonomy to work on avenues to better the customer experience.

· Agile training for every employee allowed for a common platform to share and discuss ideas.

downside----------------------------The QA found itself disorganized at times after the shift to agile. This was mainly due to minimal documentation in agile. The QA’s were accustomed to follow detailed requirement plan for testing.

Managers and Team Leads were slow to adopt to concept of not delegating tasks. This was mainly triggered by resistance to change.

· suggests that this can be overcome by harboring trust and engagement.I believe Adams-Woodford should have given further thought and discussion on going forward with a methodology because the cry for change to Kanban from many a developers depicts some possible scope of improvement. I would not call this a downside but rather an upside, because it shows us that employee want to be engaged in process improvement.

3. He should focus on becoming involed in a compy wide agile initiative because there was only one team utilizing the agile whilst the rest lagged behind. There should be an organization wide focus on adapting to agile because it is doomed at just a team level.

4. I think this needs to be discussed with the whole development team along with relevant stakeholders. All inputs should be considered and then a trial and error method should be applied. This would involve switching between different frameworks of Agile and finding the right fit. It is always a fail forward and fail early approach which helps us understand our strengths and weaknesses.

The case mentions: “Development teams switched from one feature to another”. This tells me that the teams do neither have an efficient Scrum master nor a competent Product owner. It is the responsibility of a Product Owner to stop feature switching in between sprint and a Scrum master to advise on Agile principles.

My analysis here would be that if features can be prioritized for 2-week period then the team should work with Scrum and better estimate their velocity take previous sprints as inputs. However, if features or stories tend to present themselves on adhoc basis tasks have a higher priority, then Kanban can work best.

5. This case has discussed the journey of SuccessMaker product and of Adams-Woodfort with it. It tells us about a very challenging yet very common situation a company can find itself in. With my experience, I can say that transitions can only make you more experienced and if a strategic plan fails, it is also a step forward. It is very difficult to follow a plan when people are resistant to change and criticize a small roadblock but leaders have to rally the team in a positive environment. This can be done by effective communication and transparency.