Case Studies

Problem

This large public vocational education provider developed a strategy to fundamentally redefine the way teaching, learning and the community interact with the institution creating an integrated network of Campuses, Specialist Centre, Flexible Learning Centres and Home, Workplace, Anywhere, students will have the option to learn where and how they want. The network is built on the integration and interdependence of physical and virtual learning environments across NSW, where digital infrastructure supports student engagement and participation in learning and assessment. This new network was also expected to optimise delivery models that work with industry to service thin markets and areas of market failure. They will modernise delivery and expand access to services in regional and remote areas.

The cornerstone of this strategy was 12 digitally connected state of the art campuses across regional NSW.

While the client was already progressing with the infrastructure development, they were struggling to create alignment on Education delivery and defining the training operating model. Vineet was engaged to lead the education program to achieve strategic outcomes.

Solution

This multi-million-dollar education program involved multiple streams including redesigning courses, defining organisation structure, operating model, marketing and business development, teachers training, IT system changes, compliance and change management. A key element of the management strategy was to establish three regional coordination teams who could engage with campuses in their region (4 campuses in each region) and build a centralised team to deliver the program. Regional teams had nominated academic and administrative reps who help gather necessary details and champion the program.

This was a ministerial priority program and has a strong oversight from the minister’s office requiring significant engagement with the community and local members. Other stakeholders were teachers, administrative staff and internal stakeholder from the property, IT, Finance and Procurement. While managing the community expectations was a large undertaking and the program organised engagement sessions with leaders, it did not cause many issues. Most of the challenges, in fact, came from the internal property team. The property team had a strong mandate to deliver the construction at a specific date and they were struggling to meet the deadlines. There was pressure on the program to cut the training and preparations time to allow more time for construction before the new campuses could be open for community and students.

After extensive consultation with academic and program team, an extension was agreed with the property team and created a plan for ‘Live-in’ training and testing the centres. The entire program team was boarded at the new campuses working through every aspect of the campus, testing and ensuring that training could be delivered on day one. Teachers were provided full two days in campus training so they could get accustomed to the new technology and feel ready and ran mock classes to ensure everything worked fine.

Results

In the end, it was a successful program, and minister and institute leaders received warm and positive feedback from the communities. The program delivered over 50 new training courses, which was a three-fold increase from the previous system and led to 10% increase in overall student enrolment with an expression of interest indicating 25% increase in the next full semester. The new campuses were also equipped to offer digital courses, opening up a world of 3000 courses online and the ability to access these courses on campus, providing existing online learners with the space to learn more effectively.

Problem

This leading Australian university, offering over 2000 courses through eight schools, was struggling to bring consistency and quality in its online course portals. The content was presented in multiple styles and was not always up to standards required for online learning. This inconsistency was resulting in the poor student experience and lack of adaption of online learning mediums.

Client adapted an international rubric of best practices in online learning. After extensive academic consultation, the rubric was customised and prioritised for the unique local context. While some of the academics who were involved and excited about the rubric started changing their course content to meet the standards, a large number of courses remained unchanged.

To bring a step change in Student Experience, the client needed to find a way to engage and motivate academics to adapt to standards quickly and simultaneously.

Vineet was engaged in designing and leading the program.

Solution

A new technology-driven approach was conceptualised where the new standards would be rolled out through a centrally managed course template. We found that designing a standard course site templates with lots of guiding tips and pre-filled toolkit for assistance to online learning, can significantly raise the quality and consistency. This new templates while providing an impetus for changes, could also give a significant head start to academics in adopting the standards. All of the university courses were to be migrated to the new template.

A fast track continuous delivery team was formed to migrate the course sites into the new templates. The team consisted of experienced academic administrative offices, students and an educational consultancy. A team of digital consultants were tasked with academics engagement, providing support, training and coaching in adopting the new standards. Range of training and engagement channels were developed including website, training video, FAQs, lunchbox sessions and direct video conferencing with experts.

Results

The program successfully migrated ~ 400 courses in the first phase and established a strong foundation, processes and approach for the university to implement the following phases. Students and academics reported a rating of 4+ (out of 5, five being the best) in the online learning experience.

Problem

This large tier 1 Financial Services client had an over $250M transformation portfolio comprising projects and programs of regulatory, infrastructure, operations, growth and innovation nature. A few years ago, they embarked on the organisational agility embraced the agile delivery approach. Delivery teams were given freedom to choose their own delivery methodology as per their own unique needs and teams adapted Scrum, Scaled Scrum, DevOps, iterative waterfall while some retained traditional waterfall. Going agile, the client found significant improvement in performance and better realisation of business outcomes.

However, due to various methodologies in play, teams were struggling to find a common language and way of working when engaging with each other across functions and department. Teams were finding it difficult to strike the right balance between Agile mindset and effective governance, particularly with the level of details and portfolio reporting requirements. Framework (Triage) for inducting New Projects, was not clear and lacked consistency and there were conflicting opinions on when business architect, technology should get involved.

Vineet was engaged to define a group-wide organisational delivery method which is agnostic to the various project management and agile methodologies.

Solutions

We started by drafting a quick straw-man framework following a quick discussion with key program delivery leaders. The straw-man was necessary to have meaningful discussion and helped focus the conversations by reducing the complexity and scale. The delivery framework was defined after extensive consultations with the program and project leaders across the organisation and was published for wider stakeholders to provide comments. Key features of the delivery framework were

• Established a “common language”
• Consistent expectations with internal and external stakeholders, and delivery partners about what we do, how we do it and what we need from them
• Quality assurance by using repeatable practices
• Individuals to balance their own judgement, discretion and empowerment within the guide rails of the framework
• A drive towards appropriate ‘active’ governance and alignment of delivery to support the policies set by Enterprise portfolio function.
• The right data to be available to support value based decision making across the portfolio
• A foundation that can underpin ‘fit for purpose’ SDLC methods e.g. Agile, Iterative Waterfall, Kanban

Following the endorsement of the delivery framework, the organisational delivery community of practice was engaged to take a lead in defining the 12 way of working streams consisting of ~ 50 processes with the associated toolkit, roles & responsibilities, hand off requirements and minimum expectations. The way of working practices were published on an internal library for practitioner to reference and continually refine.

Result

Established a common delivery framework in a complex environment, reducing the delivery risk and driving improved delivery performance; both speed and quality.

Problem

This large financial services business recently completed a major technology implementation and associated business transformation. Executives and Sponsors of the Transformation wanted to ensure if the program met its objective, if there are major outstanding issues and if there are certain practices that could be done better. Also, there was a compliance requirement to submit the review to the Department of Finance and Innovation (DFSI).

Vineet was engaged in conducting the independent post-implementation review.

Solution

It was challenging the get the single source of truth and reviewing the program documentation in a short period but it was critical to establish the fact base and baseline to assess the business outcomes. This was further complicated by the fact that the technology implementation was delivered separately to the business transformation (people and process aspects) and the documented program objectives were limited to delivery of scoped items.

Engaging with the transformation and senior business stakeholders defined the expected business objectives and measures of success. Agreement on the measures of success was critical for an objective assessment. Interviewed transformation team leaders, vendors and operational leaders to understand and verify if the expected outcomes were achieved. Assess the outcomes against the measures of success to provide an evidence-based review. Identified the gap areas to ensure the existing issues are managed through the remedial program.

Deep dive into the program practices such as governance, stereo decision making, product quality and testing, change management, and other routines to identify the responsible factors leading to various issues. Provided detailed recommendations and an action plan with responsible areas to make changes for better value realisation for ongoing and future programs. Top themes were the ability to manage agile streams at scale, testing efficiencies and governance approach.

Result

Recommendations were adopted in the overall delivery maturity plan and a strategic decision to implement the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).