Resource Type: Case Study

Helge Heupel GmbH Doubles Cybersecurity Readiness With Cprime

Posted on July 1, 2024 by -

The automotive industry is subject to various regulatory frameworks, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and ISO standards. Increasing Secure Score—a widely-recognized cybersecurity metric found within the popular Microsoft Defender 365 solution—ensures compliance with these regulations by implementing recommended security controls and best practices. Beyond legal compliance, a high Secure Score means the company is protecting itself from potentially harmful and expensive cyber attacks, saving valuable time, money, and brand reputation.

The case study documents the dramatic increase one automobile software solution company realized in its Secure Score with the help of Cprime consultants: from 44.24% to 85.19%.

Driving Toward More Secure Automotive Software

Helge Heupel GmbH, a leading automobile software solution company, wanted to boost customer confidence, and protect data and system security by enhancing its Secure Score within Microsoft Defender 365. Secure Score is a pivotal metric reflecting an organization’s security posture, measured through the implementation of recommended security actions.

Why would a company want to increase its Secure Score?

An automotive software company, like any other organization, would have several compelling reasons to increase its Secure Score in Microsoft 365. Here are some key motivations:

  • Protection of Sensitive Data: Automobile companies deal with a vast amount of sensitive data, including proprietary designs, customer information, and manufacturing processes. Enhancing Secure Score helps in safeguarding this data against unauthorized access, data breaches, and cyber threats. 
  • Regulatory Compliance: The automotive industry is subject to various regulatory frameworks, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and ISO standards. Increasing Secure Score ensures compliance with these regulations by implementing recommended security controls and best practices.
  • Prevention of Intellectual Property Theft: Automobile companies invest heavily in research and development to innovate new technologies and designs. A higher Secure Score mitigates the risk of intellectual property theft by strengthening data protection measures and access controls.
  • Protection of Customer Trust: Automobile companies rely on customer trust and loyalty to maintain their market position. By increasing Secure Score, companies demonstrate their commitment to safeguarding customer data and protecting their privacy, thereby enhancing brand reputation and trust.
  • Mitigation of Operational Risks: Cyberattacks and data breaches can disrupt manufacturing processes, supply chains, and customer services, leading to significant operational and financial losses. Improving Secure Score helps in mitigating these risks by fortifying security defenses and incident response capabilities.
  • Partnership and Supplier Requirements: Automobile companies often collaborate with various partners, suppliers, and vendors across the supply chain. Increasing Secure Score may be necessary to meet contractual obligations, security requirements, and third-party audits imposed by partners and suppliers.
  • Competitive Advantage: In today’s digital landscape, cybersecurity is increasingly becoming a differentiator for businesses. Automobile companies with a high Secure Score can leverage this as a competitive advantage to win contracts, partnerships, and customers who prioritize security in their procurement decisions.

For organizations with a low Secure Score, there’s a pressing need to bolster their defenses and elevate their Secure Score to a level where they are less vulnerable to cyber threats. Achieving a higher Secure Score not only signifies a stronger security culture but also reduces the organization’s susceptibility to various cyber threats such as data breaches, malware attacks, and phishing attempts—enhancing their resilience and minimizing the risk of being targeted by malicious actors.

Increasing the Secure Score involves implementing additional security controls, adhering to best practices, and addressing vulnerabilities across different domains such as identity management, data protection, threat detection, device security, and application security. 

Ultimately, the goal is to elevate the Secure Score to a number where the organization is not only better protected against potential threats but also meets industry standards and benchmarks for cybersecurity. This proactive approach promotes confidence among stakeholders, customers, and partners in the organization’s ability to protect their interests even as cyber threats grow.

The Story

When Helge Heupel called Cprime in to assist, they were at a baseline Secure Score of 44.24 percent—a number right in line with most software organizations in the automotive and similar industries. It indicated they had taken many of the usual steps to make their systems secure, but that there was plenty of room for improvement; there was still a significant gap in the overall security posture.

The Goal: Raise the Secure Score to 75% or Better

The primary objective was to elevate the Secure Score to the maximum achievable number, signifying robust implementation of security controls and adherence to industry best practices. An initial goal was 75%, which would have put this automotive supplier ahead of most organizations in their industry. We also established a stretch goal of 85%, seeking out as many value-add improvements as we could reasonably make. 

Methodology and Action

Collaborating with the company, Cprime consultants followed a structured approach to enhance their Secure Score:

  1. Assessment and Analysis: Comprehensive evaluation of existing security configurations to identify vulnerabilities and gaps.

  1. Secure Score Benchmarking: Comparison of Secure Score against industry standards and Microsoft recommendations to determine necessary improvements.

  1. Prioritization: Determining which improvements were both immediately doable and would have the greatest impact on improving the Secure Score, allowing us to affect the greatest improvement as quickly as possible.
  2. Recommendation Implementation: Diligent execution of recommended security enhancements across various domains including Identity, Data, Devices, Infrastructure, and Apps.

  1. Policy Enforcement: Implementation of stringent security policies governing access control, data handling, and incident response.

Here is an example of one of the areas to be addressed to achieve the 85% Secure Score. 

Security Improvement in Action

The following recommendations were targeting ‘Microsoft Entra ID’ the Identity and Access avenue of an organization.

In order to achieve robust security in this area, we followed the recommendations and implemented nine policies governing things like multifactor identification, personal device usage, and strictly limiting admin access.

As a result, we achieved a 100% Score on the Identity.

We enforced the following Data Protection Policies to achieve a 100% Score on Data as well:

  • Data Encryption: All sensitive data, both in transit and at rest, is encrypted using industry-standard encryption algorithms. This includes data stored in databases, files shared internally or externally, and data transmitted over networks.
  • Data Classification: A data classification policy is implemented to categorize data based on its sensitivity level (e.g., public, internal, confidential, or restricted). This helps in applying appropriate security controls and access restrictions based on the sensitivity of the data.
  • Data Retention and Disposal: A data retention policy defines how long different types of data should be retained based on regulatory requirements, business needs, and legal obligations. Data that is no longer required is securely disposed of using methods such as shredding or secure deletion.

Data Loss Prevention (DLP): DLP policies are implemented to prevent the unauthorized sharing or leakage of sensitive data. This includes monitoring outbound communications, detecting sensitive data patterns, and blocking or alerting on unauthorized data transfers.

In all, we made improvements across all the Secure Score components:

  • Identity: Strengthened authentication mechanisms, enforced multi-factor authentication, and minimized privileges. (From 35.25% to 100% Secure Score)
  • Data: Enhanced data encryption, implemented data loss prevention policies, and restricted unauthorized access. (From 1% to 100% Secure Score)
  • Devices: Enforced device encryption, deployed endpoint detection and response solutions, and ensured compliance with security baselines. (From 43.79% to 70.08% Secure Score)
  • Apps / Infrastructure: Strengthened application security, enforced secure coding practices, and conducted regular vulnerability assessments. Improved network security, implemented robust firewall configurations, and enhanced server hardening measures. (From 66.06% to 87.88% Secure Score)

Outcome

Through dedicated efforts and strategic implementation of security measures, Helge Heupel Gmbh and Cprime successfully elevated the Secure Score to 85.19% (an overall increase of 97%), signifying a strengthened security posture and reduced susceptibility to cyber threats.

Maintaining Vigilance 

Improving Secure Score is undoubtedly a significant step towards enhancing an organization’s security posture. However, it’s essential to recognize that achieving a high Secure Score is not the final solution to security but rather the beginning of an ongoing process. Security is a dynamic and ever-evolving field, and the landscape of threats and vulnerabilities continually changes.

Therefore, even after achieving a desirable Secure Score, this automotive supplier will remain vigilant and proactive in monitoring their systems, networks, and applications for potential vulnerabilities and threats. This involves:

  • Regular Security Assessments: Conducting periodic security assessments and audits to identify any new vulnerabilities or weaknesses in the organization’s infrastructure, systems, and applications. These assessments may include penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, and security risk assessments.
  • Threat Intelligence: Staying informed about the latest cybersecurity threats, trends, and attack techniques through threat intelligence sources, security advisories, and information sharing forums. This enables organizations to proactively anticipate and mitigate emerging threats.
  • Patch Management: Implementing a robust patch management process to promptly apply security patches and updates to software, firmware, and operating systems. Patching known vulnerabilities helps prevent threat actors from exploiting security weaknesses.
  • Security Awareness Training: Providing regular security awareness training to employees to educate them about common security threats, phishing scams, social engineering tactics, and best practices for safeguarding sensitive information. Employees are often the first line of defense against cyber threats and must be equipped with the knowledge and skills to recognize and respond to security incidents.
  • Incident Response Planning: Developing and regularly testing incident response plans to ensure a timely and effective response to security incidents or data breaches. This includes defining roles and responsibilities, establishing communication channels, and outlining steps for containment, eradication, and recovery.
  • Continuous Monitoring and Optimization: Proactive monitoring and optimization of security measures to adapt to emerging threats and evolving security requirements. 
  • Continuous Improvement: Continuously evaluating and refining security controls, policies, and procedures based on lessons learned from security incidents, industry best practices, and changes in the threat landscape. Security is a journey, and organizations must strive for continuous improvement to stay ahead of evolving threats.

What’s Your Secure Score?                                               

The journey of enhancing Secure Score underscores Helge Heupel’s commitment to prioritizing cybersecurity and safeguarding its digital assets. By diligently implementing recommended security improvements and adopting a proactive approach towards security, the company has fortified its defenses, ensuring resilience against potential cyber threats.

What about your organization? Whether you use Microsoft Secure Score or not, all the same principles and best practices apply. If you’ve only done the minimum to get by—like most of your competitors—then you’re probably hovering around the 45% mark like this automotive supplier was. Partner with Cprime to assess your current security situation and double your cybersecurity protection starting right now.

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Revitalizing Scaled Agility for a Leading Technology Company

Posted on February 6, 2024 by -

The Client

Countless businesses worldwide depend on our client’s networking and communications offerings. Since 1984, they have developed a diverse range of products, including routers, switches, wireless access points, security solutions, collaboration tools, managed services, and IoT applications.

Presently, this California-headquartered tech firm operates in more than 100 countries. Renowned for their groundbreaking advancements and unwavering dedication to providing top-notch products and services, they cater to various data-intensive sectors such as healthcare, finance, education, and government.

In 2022, the company generated revenues exceeding $51 billion.

The Challenge: Managing growing pains with SAFe

Although they had implemented the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®), their sizable, dispersed software development organization was having trouble reaping its full benefits. Key challenges they were facing included:

  • Team alignment: Using the normal SAFe ceremonies to coordinate work had become difficult with 25 Scrum teams and over 180 engineers, product managers, and designers involved. 
  • Lack of visibility into dependencies: Teams relied on other organizations to deliver components, but they weren’t made aware of any roadblocks. 
  • Predictability: Even after many Program Increments (PIs), they struggled to complete the scheduled tasks.
  • Ineffective planning: Epic planning sessions went on for hours, with little relevance for most of the attendees. Team members who didn’t have clear commitments become less engaged over time. 

The company eventually turned to Cprime, a valued long-time partner, to diagnose problems and re-energize their SAFe deployment because of missed deliveries, uncertain throughput, and stagnant strategic efforts.

(Scaled Agile Framework and SAFe are registered trademarks of Scaled Agile, Inc.)

The Solution: Our specialized method for implementing complex SAFe

We knew that a one-size-fits-all framework refresh would not work, given the organizational complexities and prior attempts.

Hands-on training, Scrum Master support, and minimally disruptive reorganization of the Agile Release Trains (ARTs)

Our team of four SAFe Practice Consultants (SPCs) carried out a thorough evaluation over the course of two months, interviewing personnel at all levels and holding targeted SAFe assessment workshops to identify the status, mindsets, and areas for development.

Key insights identified three focal areas for their particular SAFe realignment:

  1. Refreshing common agile practices: From Story Mapping to efficient PI Planning events, we offered brief hands-on training based on SAFe concepts. This increased mutual understanding.
  2. Empowering Scrum Masters: To help Scrum Masters establish practices in their teams, we created a community of practice for knowledge exchange and allotted specific coaching time for them.
  3. Streamlining coordination: We identified four clusters of teams using dependency mapping to make PI Planning easier to schedule and carry out, and more engaging.

Using SAFe to maintain success

We collaborated closely with leadership to:

  • Formalize communities of practice and incorporate important ceremonies into team processes
  • Support ongoing education for engineers to aid with scaling
  • Include ceremonies for SAFe that emphasize continual improvement.
  • Establish measurements and reports to improve understanding of PI performance

The Impact: Enhanced predictability, quality, and agility

Our SAFe-based strategy resulted in quantifiable results over a six-month period, and over two complete PIs:

  • PI Plan completion predictability has increased by dramatically
  • Faster value delivery with fewer delays caused by cross-team coordination
  • Increased planning participation and clear team linkages
  • Increased capacity for strategic initiatives

Following the engagement, our client was in a strong position to create outstanding customer experiences despite a fast changing technological environment because they had a rejuvenated SAFe foundation in place.

Want to update your SAFe rollout?

We can assist if your SAFe deployment is having trouble gaining traction. Numerous businesses have used our consultants to adapt, popularize, and maintain their Scaled Agile Framework.

To explore your objectives and find out how we can work together to make SAFe work for your organization, explore our flexible Scaled Agility solutions.

Texas Mutual Adopts a Product-led Approach

Posted on January 18, 2024 by -

The Client

Texas Mutual has served employers and workers in Texas for over 30 years. Their focus on technology, innovation, and value-added partnerships has fueled their growth to the largest workers’ compensation provider in the state. They currently serve over 1.5 million people through over 75,000 employers across the Lone Star State.

The Challenge: The need for organizational change

The insurance provider has always valued innovation and the smart use of technology for the benefit of its policyholders. After 30 years with IT practices built on waterfall project planning foundations, they found themselves at a crossroads. They had already made strides in transitioning to a more agile development framework over a three-year period, but those efforts had been wholly led by the IT team, with product owners and other key roles embedded (and, to some extent, siloed) within IT. 

The CEO recognized that if the organization was going to see the full benefits of agility, and be in a better position to deliver on customer expectations more quickly, they needed to take the next step and shift towards a product-led approach across the enterprise. This factor—understanding of the need for organizational change at the executive level—is a vital factor in the eventual success of this and other transformations. 

Since change of this nature would have been disruptive and unsustainable at the enterprise level, a small pilot program was initiated to validate the efficacy of the new operational model; specifically two key experiments with three teams. Each team was trained on a different way to work:

  • For the first experiment, they focused two teams around supporting Agent partners, allowing them to own the end-to-end value delivery.
  • For the second experiment another team was picked to work on a low-risk modernization activity. The team was asked to practice a different approach to delivering on tech modernization. The following key lessons were learned:
    • The team was able to move faster when dependencies on other teams were removed.
    • The teams had ownership of the value delivery from end to end. Teams can see the larger vision of the delivery.
    • Teams can deliver on modernization and deliver on customer value. 
    • The team was able to balance the priorities of external customer with internal employee pain points.

Change is difficult

The company grappled with an outdated technology stack that they were in the middle of modernizing, and misaligned organizational roles, creating a complex landscape for change. But, despite the CEO’s commitment to change, some leaders and staff were skeptical and at times resistant, complicating the transformation process.

Beverly Harris, the VP of Corporate Strategy and Product—tasked with heading up this initiative as part of a transition team, alongside peers from IT, the Chief Data & Analytics Office and the Agile Office—recalls the challenges they faced as the scope of the change became clear. “Change is always difficult, even when the need for it is recognized. As we started proposing adjustments—and as implementation commenced, the reality that we really were doing this became tangible—and we experienced quite a bit of anxiety, trepidation and concern from well-meaning leaders and team members who were thinking, “We’re a high-performing and successful company. What’s so broken that needs to be fixed? Are we certain things will change if we adopt this approach? Why mess with a good thing? Why do this now?’” 

Additionally, transformation fatigue was becoming a real issue. A technology and process modernization, including an Agile transformation, had been ongoing for some time, and continual change can be exhausting for even the most dedicated team members. 

“Strategically, you can’t just pause on delivering business value for years in order to focus on modernizing,” Beverly notes. “We strongly believed there had to be a way to deliver quantifiable value while this effort was ongoing.” But how? 

The need for guidance

The lack of a clear roadmap for transitioning to a new way of working, especially while delivering business value, added to the challenges.

Transitioning to a new operational model is a complex endeavor, fraught with both organizational and technical challenges. But as the company discovered, the right partnership and guidance can make all the difference.

The Solution: A three-pronged approach to implement this new way of working

Beverly reached out to Cprime—already a trusted coaching and consulting partner that had helped the organization in the past—to utilize Cprime’s expertise a little differently that had been used in the months prior to assuming her role as head of Product. 

A strategic product coach, Chris Hunter, was assigned to work closely with the new product leader, focusing on building an effective product practice, and defining its role within the organization. 

This program took a three-pronged approach:

  1. Strategic coaching
  2. Tooling analysis and recommendations
  3. Custom training and team-specific coaching support

Strategic coaching

Chris recalls, “Heading into the engagement, my focus was on helping Beverly envision what the new product team would look like: what roles were needed, where would Product fit within the organization, what changes needed to be made in process, reporting, and other areas to support the shift to a product-led approach. Then, we needed to fully understand the current state, and establish a roadmap for getting from where they were to where they wanted, and needed, to be.”

The coaching was tailored to meet the organization’s unique needs, helping them navigate the complex process of change.

“Chris has been a calm in the storm,” Beverly says. “He was able to ground us firmly in the concepts of a product-led approach, but also to understand the why behind them. And, most importantly, he worked with us to figure out what works best for us. Because there are frameworks and pre-made templates out there that we could have tried to force to fit, but that would never have been as effective as the custom approach Chris took.”

At times, this necessitated some difficult conversations. 

“Sometimes Chris had to say, ‘I’m not sure why you decided to do X when you should be working towards Y. And I would explain, but it might have come down to, ‘This is easier, or this is how we’ve always done it.’ Then he’d help keep us pointed in the right direction: ‘Ok, but you need to keep evolving—this is just a pit stop on your way to getting where you really want to be.’ And that’s been invaluable. Our mantra throughout our journey became ‘directionally accurate’. We had to intentionally be making steps that were directionally accurate to where we wanted to be—it wasn’t about staying where we were because it was comfortable, it was about moving forward.” 

Tooling analysis and recommendations

In addition to the higher-level strategic coaching, Cprime technologists undertook a comprehensive tools assessment, leading to key recommendations for tool updates and additions.

The teams were already embedded in Atlassian Jira, and that solution has all the features and flexibility necessary to accomplish what they wanted. So, recommendations revolved around modernizing the Jira setup via a migration to Atlassian Cloud, and recommendations for custom configurations to best support the organization’s product-led workflows and business goals.

The right tools, training and support can act as catalysts, accelerating the pace of organizational change and ensuring that it sticks, so training was the third prong in Cprime’s solution.

Custom training and team coaching support

Customized training programs were rolled out to teach the fundamentals of product agility, how best to leverage the newly configured Jira Cloud, and how these concepts and tools were being fit to the company’s strategy and circumstances.

These classes and workshops involved the executive leadership, business managers, and product and tech team members within the product organization, ensuring alignment with the new product-led approach, both within the tech teams, and between tech and the larger business. And, executives welcomed a program designed to help them understand how to best support the product team throughout and following the transformation. 

The Result: A successful pilot leads to a commitment to iterative scaling

The engagement has set the stage for Texas Mutual to create specialized product areas and teams. In-depth training has already occurred and plans are already in place for team-level coaching as the reorganization stabalizes. 

The transformation has led to increased visibility and accountability, clarified roles, and a streamlined organizational structure. A foundational operating model was solidified by the end of the third quarter of this year. 

While the company is still in a state of learning and adjustment, the mood is excited and positive about the path they’re on. Encouragingly, the engagement survived a CEO transition—the original CEO who set the wheels in motion retiring—and the new CEO continues to champion the shift, underscoring leadership’s commitment to a product-led approach. 

Chris confirms, “It’s great to see this transformation being supported from the top-down. Having leadership support, even at the executive level, helps the organization push through the growing pains and difficulties that inevitably come with this level of change.”  

Beverly concludes, “In addition to the overall guidance he’s provided, Chris has been invaluable to me personally. Having someone with his knowledge and experience that I can bounce things off of—how should we approach this, what do you think our top priority needs to be here—has made this organizational journey of change far easier and less daunting than I know it would have been otherwise.

He’s really kept us centered, pointed toward our North Star, and provided very practical advice that’s helped us right our course throughout the process.”

With the successes reported by the pilot product teams and organization changes already made, the insurance leader continues to engage Cprime to continue scaling the transformational effort with ongoing strategic coaching and training as needed. 

Could your company benefit from results like these? Explore Cprime’s flexible product agility solutions tailored to meet your unique needs.

Upgrading the Enterprise: A Strategic Portfolio Transformation at a Global Commercial Insurance Provider

Posted on December 13, 2023 by -

Overview

A recognized innovator, this Midwest-based insurance provider and long-term Cprime client has been developing market-leading insurance products for over a 130 years. As a top-10 insurer in the United States commercial insurance space, the company continues to build on their history and break new ground, expanding their global reach by developing new digital products and insurance technologies.

Challenge: A Top-Down Transformation to Redefine Portfolio and focus on Product

On the heels of a successful essential SAFe© transformation designed to revitalize their ways of working and improve its ability to rapidly deliver new product offerings, the Commercial P&C provider sought to pursue Strategic Portfolio Management as a catalyst to accelerate enterprise evolution. With a partial transformation under its belt, the company recognized it had reached a natural transition point—it needed to address several interrelated organizational bottlenecks before it could move forwardy.

“To achieve the next level of its organizational evolution, the company had to change its mindset and pivot away from project-oriented thinking,” explains Sneha Crews, Solutions Architect, Cprime. “It needed to focus on product and portfolio and align itself around identifying its value streams.”

Distinguishing value

Because it perceived its portfolio as a tool for funding project work rather than aligning its product strategies, the insurer’s decision makers struggled to differentiate between profitable and unprofitable aspects of the business. This lack of a proper organizational distinction between business functions and product also affected the way the company recognized and delivered value.

““From a management perspective, the company had difficulty distinguishing between business areas because all of its expenses came from the operations or claims pots,” clarifies Crews. “When it came to identifying and, more importantly, aligning value streams within its portfolios, it also had serious information silos and accountability issues. Ultimately, no one saw the big picture because no one had responsibility at the product level.”

“With their launch of a portfolio-level SAFe© pilot, the insurer has embraced strategic portfolio management. Its leaders are comfortable with the concepts of participatory budgeting and are organized around their value streams.” — Sneha Crews, Solutions Architect, Cprime

Breaking down budget barriers

Long planning and budget cycles were the company’s next choke point. Because the insurer still used traditional budgeting practices to plan its projects months in advance, it lacked the flexibility to pivot or adapt when conditions changed.

“They were locked into the old iron triangle of scope, schedule, and budget,” says Crews. “When you have a hundred-year-old company, habits become entrenched. From a functional SPM perspective, they couldn’t move forward without change.”

Solution: Leveling up from project-level successes—A Cprime partnership for organizational change

The insurer initially approached Cprime for its reputation for success and ability to effect progressive change, and the Cprime teams impressed management with the results of their early lean agile transformation efforts. Recognizing the project-level benefits of its transition from traditional waterfall ways of working to program increment (PI) planning and agile release trains (ARTs), the company wanted to continue along the scaled agile path in its executive offices.

“The initial transition with Cprime was a catalyst. Agile was the snowball that grew bigger as it rolled down the hill,” says Crews. “We started with coaching agile teams, but the insurer understood Cprime could scale up to transform its operating model from project-focused to a product-led approach. It knew that we had coaches capable at the strategic portfolio level. That’s why it began shifting its thinking and looking at changes to its org structure.”

“Because Cprime partners with them at multiple levels on topics ranging from product to enterprise operating model, the insurer really enjoys working with us. It plans to continue collaborating with us to define and execute future growth.” — Sneha Crews, Solutions Architect, Cprime

Changing the culture and reassessing traditional roles

Changing the org chart, however, meant changing the culture and reassessing traditional roles. This meant combating cultural inertia and overcoming pushback to redefine the role of the organization’s driving force—its traditional project managers.

“Moving to a focus on product, their project managers had to adapt to the organizational changes,” says Crews. “They had to be reassured their institutional and professional expertise was valuable for more than managing limited scope projects with clear beginnings, middles, and endings. They needed to see themselves as part of a greater whole.”

The changes, however, ran far deeper than project management at the operational level. Proving its commitment to change, the insurer brought in a new CIO with lean agile experience.

“It was very important to have a champion at the C-suite level to validate the SPM process and confirm it wasn’t just marketing speak,” says Crews. “With that champion in our corner, Cprime identified which areas of the organization would be ideal for a pilot. The Cprime teams began targeted training to get the insurer’s leaders up to speed with the concepts of strategic portfolio management (SPM). From there, the teams moved on to value stream identification and participatory budgeting workshops.”

Incremental change, not boiling the ocean

Having established the fundamentals of SPM, the Cprime team began its executive-level value stream identification sessions. These sessions allowed the insurer to align its portfolio objectives, streamline its product creation workflow, and speed up a product’s time to market.

“We didn’t want to boil the ocean, so we began with focusing leadership on determining the value stream of specific products within their portfolios. Once they had identified the value those products offered their customers, we broke it down to the IT infrastructure and technical systems they needed in place to manage those streams.”

Fostering involvement and accountability from the top down

The team then moved to participatory budgeting, an LPM practice that moves away from project-centric governance and approvals to provide discretionary funding to value streams directly from the portfolio budget. Participatory budgeting places decisions in the hands of the stakeholders closest to the product.

“Participatory budgeting provides multiple organizational benefits. The ability to make direct decisions creates a sense of ownership and responsibility for a product in stakeholders—that helps the company budget realistically and avoid the product neglect and the accrual of technical debt common with the traditional budgeting and approval process,” explains Crews. “It allows product owners to pivot and rapidly adjust to changes in circumstances or market conditions and encourages communication instead of silos between stakeholders.”

Leaders must not only implement changes in their operating models but evolve them—aligning technology, resources, and investments with enterprise strategy and desired business outcomes—to achieve sustainable success.

Results: A practical blueprint for Strategic Portfolio Management

Over the course of the engagement, Cprime worked with the insurer to establish clear value streams, improve stakeholder engagement and accountability, and simplify budgeting by establishing lean guardrails to fund product initiatives and form lasting product teams rather than disposable project teams.

“With the launch of its portfolio-level SAFe pilot, the insurer has its key people embracing strategic portfolio management. Its leaders are comfortable with the concepts of participatory budgeting and are organized around their value streams—the fact that they keep moving forward validates their high-level progress,” says Crews. “They have excellent momentum—they’re no longer locked into the limitations of scope, schedule, and budget or tying product funding to a restrictive long-term governance process. They are planning and re-planning on the fly to match their outcomes to changing conditions.”

Seeing the core principles of strategic portfolio management in practice, the insurer has increased its commitment to propagating a new operating model throughout all levels of the organization.

 

Would you like to see similar results for your organization? Explore our flexible Strategic Portfolio Management solutions today.

Millions in Forecast Savings and a Whole New Way to Delight Customers at This Tech Giant: ITSM Using Jira Service Management

Posted on October 23, 2023 by -

 

The Client

Over the course of four decades, this tech pioneer has grown steadily into one of the best-known providers of personal computers, peripherals, and infrastructure hardware, as well as a diversified range of related products and services. They now sit on the Fortune 50, bring in over $100 billion in annual revenues, and own a solid reputation in a highly competitive industry.

The Challenge: Data was there, but it was difficult to leverage

With the tremendous volume of hardware and software products the company produces, sells, and distributes worldwide, their services division naturally sees a high volume of issues coming in daily. From manufacturing defects to user error, these issues are inevitable. But, ensuring they are repaired, replaced, or otherwise rectified in a fast, convenient manner, is a top priority for the company.

A vast amount of data, but limited usability

Over time, the company had collected hundreds of thousands of data points around these issues, with a goal of identifying trends and better mitigating recurring problems. But, the bulk of that information was stored as freeform text within each Jira issue ticket the service department created.

As a result, identifying trends and drilling down to root causes was a highly manual process—both time consuming and labor intensive.

“The data was there, but it was hard to get at, and hard to make sense of,” says Morgan Luu, Solutions Architect with Cprime. “That was impeding the team’s ability to fully realize their committment.”

Committed to customer delight AND cost control

Recognizing the challenges the service department was facing, a new initiative was launched focused on establishing a tool-based way to efficiently leverage this vast bank of data to support root cause analysis. This, in turn, would support faster, more cost-effective resolution of customer issues, and a reduction in repeated problems. 

The timeline was tight, but that’s because the potential return on investment—both financially and in terms of customer satisfaction—was huge.

“Our organization spends millions of dollars monthly on technical support and service issues,” says the Technical Program Manager in charge of the initiative. “So, obviously there’s a cost issue. But, more importantly, every defect equates to a dissatisfied customer, vendor, retailer, or distributor. That’s why improving this program is such a high priority.”

“We had to develop and implement a solution in record time,” he continues. “Morgan and the Cprime team rose to the challenge and immediately started attacking the strategy and execution.”

The Solution: Customized implementation–ITSM using Jira Service Management–to make all that data instantly actionable

In discussions with other leaders within the organization, the Technical Program Manager was recommended to contact Atlassian—the maker of Jira Software—to see what they could suggest for adapting their existing Jira solution to accommodate this new initiative.

Atlassian, in turn, recommended Cprime—a long time Platinum Solutions Partner with over a decade of experience leading Atlassian implementation and optimization engagements. 

The first point of contact was Scott Steinmetz, a Cprime Account Executive. Scott, in turn, brought in Solutions Architect, Morgan Luu. 

Settling on Jira Service Management as the solution

Over parts of four months, the Technical Program Manager collaborated closely with Morgan and Scott to dive deep into the current state of the data, business processes, and goals of the executive initiative he was leading. In the end, he decided that Jira was not the optimal solution, but that Jira Service Management (JSM) fit the bill.

“With Morgan and Scott’s help, I could confidently choose JSM as the right solution for us,” he says, and adds, “I needed to be sure the tool was going to help us accomplish everything we needed, because it was going to be a large investment in time, effort, and money. But, even though it took time, I never felt pressured to move ahead with questions still outstanding, or to settle for second best.”

Establishing the optimal JSM setup

Over the next three months, the Cprime team performed a number of in-depth evaluations, a thorough gap analysis, and mapped out all the custom data fields that would be necessary to turn the wealth of information the client had collected into highly actionable data.

“One of the keys to success,” says Morgan, “was taking the business processes they already followed and helping translate them into workflows, notifications, and automation rules across the system, for a seamless boost in speed and efficiency.”

Launching the new system

From that point, four weeks of development and implementation work resulted in the final solution, which launched just eight months after the initiative began. This included:

  • Standing up and launching a new instance of JSM Data Center, including creation and configuration of custom data fields and a corresponding database to support data analysis and reporting
  • Installing and configuring Atlassian Assets—a native integration for asset management—that was used creatively to power some of the queueing and automation needs the solution required
  • Development of custom integrations with other tools to support data gathering, reporting, and workflow automation
  • Creation of a method for collaborating with vendors and other partners directly through the JSM portal so issues can be viewed and edited by the most appropriate contributor

The Technical Program Manager sums up what was accomplished: “This is an example of producing a highly valuable solution in minimal time with no detrimental impacts—it’s been stable since day one—and with minimal resources required from the IT team. And, importantly, it’s proven highly scalable: we’ve done 26 releases improving the product in the first month alone.”

The Results: Actionable data to support successful root cause analysis, reduced issue handle time, and huge savings

The customer service teams have already seen tremendous benefits with the new customized JSM solution, integrations, and templates.

  • Faster resolution – Average handling time for each issue has been reduced by 15 minutes, allowing for greater productivity and boosting customer delight
  • Greater data leverage – Every new issue adds to the growing database within ten defect types, all of which can be sliced and diced across dozens of custom fields to identify trends and root causes 
  • Excellent scalability – The service teams are fully empowered to continue scaling the solution with new defect types and templates as needed
  • Tremendous cost savings – These improvements combine to produce a forecast savings of millions of dollars annually

Based on a strong collaborative relationship

While the technical work and expert advice were invaluable, the Technical Program Manager feels the relationship Cprime established is the real key to the success of this engagement.

“It really all comes back to the relationship: working with Scott and Morgan has been incredible; without that relationship, this engagement would not have been such a resounding success,” he says. 

He sees Cprime’s way of working as a refreshing change from experiences he’s had in the past.

“I’ve worked with vendors in the past who want to be the keyholders to the knowledge and skills we need. Cprime has done the opposite: they’ve given us everything we need to continue scaling and improving this new solution.” 

And, although this engagement is finished, the relationship continues.

“Now that the engagement has ended, I can still rely on Morgan for further help because they have empowered us to continue building out the capabilities; if we need technical support and advice, we still get it.”

He concludes, “I can’t say enough about the value Cprime brought to the table here. I’m recommending them to everyone who needs help they can provide.”

Could your company benefit from results like these?

Cprime offers a host of services around business technology implementation, strategic consulting, and training to help businesses improve ways of working, just like we have for this client. 

If your organization could benefit from an upgrade in your customer service workflow, explore our flexible ITSM service offerings. 

Or, contact a Cprime expert today to discuss your unique needs. We have the people, partners, and expertise to both point you in the right direction and get you where you want to go—and beyond!

Creating Organizational Momentum for the Adoption of Agile in a Large Government Agency

Posted on July 28, 2023 by -

Overview

The agency’s digital division shoulders tremendous responsibility, delivering and operating the digital solutions that support vital transportation, communication, and strategic defense systems.

However, they struggled with delivery challenges—projects regularly running significantly over budget and over time, poor solutions being delivered, and being unable to react to new requirements being driven by a changing global environment.

The Challenge: Creating Organizational Momentum

For over twenty years, this government agency has been trying to transform themselves for the digital world, including moving to a more Agile way of working. Many complications stood in the way of success:

  •     The inherent bureaucratic scaffolding underpinning the agency’s mission and activities
  •     Decades of regulated processes presenting a formidable “how we’ve always done it” mentality
  •     The glacial speed of change inherent to all government procedures
  •     Team members suffering from transformation fatigue after such a long period of effort

Cprime was brought in by the Deputy Director of a delivery area that had been successfully delivering using an Agile methodology to the extent they could. They were running into friction as they tried to operate within an organization who’s reporting and governance model expected all delivery to follow a traditional waterfall model, and where there was no organizational support for the use of Agile, and no organizational consensus that Agile should be used.

Matt White, a Cprime consultant, explains, “We faced the challenge of influencing the thinking around Agile within the organization, to demonstrate the art of the possible and the potential benefits, to remove any perceived blockers and impediments, and to create some organizational consensus and momentum around the adoption of Agile.”

The Solution: Harnessing Enthusiastic Volunteers Under a Guiding Coalition

The first step was a Discovery period and summary report that established the current state of agility within the organization. This was handled by consultants Peter Gardiner and Matt White.

Peter recalls, “This discovery period resulted in a formal assessment and a backlog of problems to be solved. Perhaps most importantly, it allowed us to network within the organization so that we could build our change strategy in concert with those leaders and subject matter experts in the best positions to support the process.”

As Cprime experts got a handle on what was required, they realized that organizational consensus and momentum around Agile would require the entire organization to be involved in understanding what the introduction of Agile might mean, what the potential benefits could be, and to test and remove perceived blockers and impediments. 

Matt states, “We knew immediately that there were too many stakeholders higher up the chain of command for us to simply identify root problems and expect solutions to be implemented. Instead, our focus was on creating a viral change movement within the organization.” The strategy was built around Dr. John Kotter’s Accelerate.

Early on, Peter and Matt helped establish a Guiding Coalition of internal leaders and executives championing the project. This group met weekly to agree on a vision for Agile within the organization and to oversee a portfolio of transformation Epics, prioritizing, reviewing progress, and removing impediments using Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) techniques.

A series of Agile briefings supported this effort. These talks by representatives from Cprime, other government agencies, and the wider industry, aimed to build knowledge and inspire people on the art of the possible. They were supplemented by a series of formal “Introduction to Agile” lunchtime training courses run for hundreds of people across the organization. This created a pool of enthusiastic volunteers that came together as a series of virtual teams around the Epics being overseen by the Guiding Coalition.

Cprime coaches Jon Malcolm and Alan Jennings then worked closely with the teams to help them deliver their Epics.

Jon notes, “Our approach was novel in that we never established a long-term two- or five-year strategy, which is common in government agencies. Rather, we took an experimental approach in which every aspect of the work gets broken down into very small tests. We coached the teams through establishing a hypothesis and testing it against real-world results. They learned from each test and moved forward in the right direction, performing bigger and better tests.”

Alan adds, “This approach allows us to deliver transformational change in a broader, bottom-up, iterative way that is far more sustainable than top-down, design-and-launch transformation efforts that we see regularly failing. We empowered small teams to make slight changes that eventually changed systems, processes, and ultimately the organization’s culture.”

Results:

The most notable result of Cprime’s involvement over the first fourteen months of the program was that the attitude of the organization towards Agile changed.

“We saw a fundamental shift,” says Peter, “to the point where the organization no longer felt the need to make a formal decision around the adoption of Agile because it had reached a broad consensus that it should be done. All the perceived blockers and reasons for not adopting it had been debunked, and senior leadership now shared a new vision of how the organization could operate in an Agile way.”

“We also saw a real change in attitude from the people on the ground who were previously so transformation fatigued,” adds Jon, “to where they were excited about what’s being accomplished and there was a huge appetite for working in an Agile way.”

Hundreds of team members have directly been trained, but the program’s impact has reached thousands.

“To me,” says Matt, “the most exciting part of this story is that other teams and leaders within the organization that had not been directly involved in the program took a keen interest in what we’re doing. They could see it was working, and it’s proven the effectiveness of Agile methods, so they wanted a chance to be involved.”

Alan concludes, “I think we successfully showed an alternative way of delivering organizational change. As a result, the agency adopted the same methods on a much larger scale to formally introduce a new operating model built on Agile, and to engage Cprime in supporting them through this process.”

Cprime Leads Jira Service Management Customization for Global Lifestyle Retail Brand

Posted on July 25, 2023 by -

The Client

A multinational lifestyle retailer with a presence in North America, Europe, and the Middle East, this Philadelphia-based Cprime client is known for its eclectic and customer-centric product selection. The company has repeatedly staved off the sales declines that have affected its competition by targeting a young, dynamic customer base. 

In 53 years of operation, the retailer has established over 200 brick-and-mortar retail locations. Its success is built on its ability to understand the marketplace and always give its customers exactly what they crave, interpreting and capitalizing on consumer desires to create demand rather than relying on aggressive marketing.

Challenge: Reducing downtime by eliminating communications bottlenecks

With its large brick-and-mortar retail network and an international workforce of over 26,000 people, the lifestyle retailer struggled to maintain an effective IT service management (ITSM) and internal service desk and support infrastructure.

“The brand’s main challenge was supporting corporate staff and store workers in their physical retail locations,” explains Drew Garvey, Enterprise Solutions Architect at Cprime. “Between rotating shifts and irregular staffing arrangements, it was difficult to contact an employee that had filed a service request for additional feedback or troubleshooting help.”

Communications were the main bottleneck. Support staff struggled to follow up with users on the corporate and retail ends of the business, and users had no clearly defined channels for specific types of issues.

“They lacked a clear reporting method—everything went through a single service funnel. Routing each request to the appropriate support team required a lot of back and forth and unproductive churn,” says Garvey. “They needed to automate and improve their services to limit the downtime caused by delays in getting the right set of eyes on a problem.”

“The experience has been a great example of Cprime as a partner and an enabler—how we collaborate with our partners to give them the tools and soft skills they need to be effective.” — Drew Garvey, Enterprise Solutions Architect, Cprime

Solution: Cprime, an Atlassian ITSM Specialized Partner with a History of Jira Service Management Successes

To stay consistent with its investment in the Atlassian software ecosystem, the lifestyle retailer opted for Jira Service Management (JSM) to address its internal support issues and facilitate integration with its teams and existing infrastructure. The retailer chose Cprime—a long-standing Atlassian Platinum Solutions Partner with ITSM Specialization—to implement the solution and rapidly deliver better service experiences to its employees. ITSM Specialized Partners are exceptional service management professionals with strong roots in IT and service delivery processes, as well as in the deployment of Atlassian products for enterprise-level customers.

“Cprime has over 10 years of experience as an Atlassian Platinum Partner and a recognized reputation for experience in the Atlassian and Jira Service Management spaces,” says Taylor Dellostretto, Cprime Account Executive. “They chose Cprime because we brought expertise and an excellent solution to the table. Our history of success assured them we could deliver efficiently and affordably.”

Cprime’s ongoing relationship with the retailer as the licensing agent and reseller for its existing Atlassian services underscored its suitability for the project.

Establishing incremental requirements and scope of work

The retailer’s requirement was straightforward—work with the company’s main stakeholders to establish and implement support queues starting with its Facilities and Change Management and Approval systems. From there, Cprime was to take on the more complex Corporate and Retail Service Management systems. 

“We identified the order and scope of work based on adoption—the number of users affected and the extent of customizations needed,” says Garvey. “Starting with the low-hanging fruit, we progressively adapted to more rigorous requirements and established sanity checks and user acceptance testing. By the time we got to their largest and most complex group—retail, with hundreds of stores and thousands of users—we had established a set of processes and a strong rapport.”  

Cprime conducted extensive working sessions with the retailer’s teams to establish baselines and new requirements.

“Once we understood their current support structure, we established baselines to ensure they weren’t losing functionality,” says Garvey. “From there we worked together to leverage the best JSM features out of the box and establish a prioritized customization backlog to help them achieve their core goals.”  

Applying expertise to solve complex needs

The Cprime team called upon the full scope of their expertise to provide the lifestyle retailer with a custom IT service management solution tailored to its most complex needs. The resulting system achieves an unprecedented amount of context-specific automation and business intelligence. This provides support personnel with all the information they need to begin work without time-consuming follow-ups.  

“The system Cprime built either automatically provides or requires each user to supply detailed information to ensure a higher level of support,” says Dellostretto. “They can’t just send an email saying the network is down. We’re enabling a system that provides them with metrics and the information they need to react quickly to service requests and be forward thinking with asset management and preventative maintenance.” 

“Using our customizations and JSM’s asset management capabilities, the system associates each user’s login to the portal with their physical store locations, and individual objects down to each laptop or barcode scanner,” says Garvey. “That’s not something I’ve seen done before.”

“Cprime brought expertise and an excellent solution to the table. Our history of success assured them we could deliver efficiently and affordably.” — Taylor Dellostretto, Account Executive, Cprime 

Making the solution mobile 

Making the entire support system responsive on mobile devices was another non-negotiable feature Cprime delivered. Retail staff on the sales floor had to be able to report issues without leaving their posts and the support team needed easy access to service queues. 

“Mobile was a more seamless, intelligent way for employees to submit requests,” says Garvey, “For service staff reporting to a location in response to a maintenance call, having the service queue in their pocket was a game changer.”

Throughout the process, the Cprime team ensured that the customization and development of the retailer’s Jira Service Management solution was a collaboration rather than a one-sided basic implementation.

“As a partner, Cprime works to meet each customer where they are. We enable our customers to achieve their goals,” says Garvey. “The retailer didn’t want a baseline, out-of-the-box product. They wanted to leverage our expertise to create a solution comprised of best practices they could educate their team members to take ownership of.”      

Results: Traceability, Efficiency, and Accountability

As Cprime works with the lifestyle retailer to roll out their Jira Service Management solution across the organization, the improvements are clear.

“Communication and user adoption are already much better,” says Garvey. “The streamlined service request/intake process has significantly reduced the time it takes to direct the appropriate support team members to pending tasks.”  

From a management perspective, the system has improved reporting and provides the support team with essential information that allows them to respond proactively to issues, often anticipating them before they arise.

“Management can refer to snapshots of exactly what their teams are working on, and what they have prioritized,” says Garvey, “They also have metrics on outcomes and response times that clearly show team leads where their service bottlenecks are.”

Cprime has also helped the company establish accountability throughout its change management and change approval processes.

“The retailer didn’t want a baseline, out-of-the-box product. They wanted Cprime’s expertise to create a solution comprised of best practices their team members could take ownership of.”  — Drew Garvey, Enterprise Solutions Architect, Cprime

“Leadership wanted traceability, efficiency, and a better feel for how many requests each location raises. They now have an auditable solution that follows best practices through multiple steps of approval for their service requests and planned and emergency changes to their operations software,” says Garvey. “They can rapidly validate and ensure the appropriate stakeholder sees every request. They previously couldn’t report on or audit any of that.”

Plans for an ongoing engagement

Due to the success of the early phases of the project, the lifestyle retailer has extended the Cprime engagement. 

“What began as a limited-scope, three-month agreement to develop a customized proof of concept, has since been extended to go live within their corporate and retail workspaces. We are currently discussing a further extension with Cprime in a support role sharing foundational knowledge and promoting user engagement as the system rolls out,” says Garvey. “Overall, the experience has been a great example of Cprime as a partner and an enabler—how we collaborate with our clients to give them the tools and soft skills they need to be effective.” 

Want to see similar results for your organization? Explore our flexible ITSM solutions and get started today!

A Lean-Agile Practice Accelerates Progress in this Luxury Auto Maker’s EV Production Facility

Posted on June 23, 2023 by -

The Challenge: The Need for Speed (to Market)

Many markets, representing millions of potential customers, have committed to banning the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035. Others have made voluntary arrangements to support the adoption of electric vehicles soon. This trend underscores the value and need for quick, efficient, and sustainable EV manufacturing—a challenge this company has proudly embraced.

Leadership committed to the electric vehicle project with a goal of opening production facilities in Shanghai, China. Seeing the need to get up and running quickly and ensure optimal collaboration between the Shanghai manufacturing teams and existing UK vehicle teams, establishing a solid Lean-Agile practice became a priority. 

But there were some formidable challenges to overcome:

  • Most members of the engineering and manufacturing teams in Shanghai were totally new to Agile, although familiar with Lean Manufacturing methods and concepts. So, they are learning a new way of working while simultaneously setting up new facilities, melding as a team, and taking on a new, high-priority project.
  • Multinational distributed teams can face barriers because of language and cultural differences, as well as the logistical issues caused by widely spaced time zones—there is only a three-hour window when teams in the UK and China are both working.

The company originally brought in an Agile Transformation vendor that failed to mesh effectively with the teams and didn’t make genuine progress. To reset the initiative, they brought in Cprime… and we have guided the Shanghai teams to perform “Above and Beyond” expectations.

The Solution: Expert Training and Coaching that Guides New Agile Teams to Scaled Success

Cprime Agile Coaches began working with the Shanghai teams in coordination with the company’s Lead Agile Coach in London. Success was a multi-step process.

Initial Planning

Training_Medium_black_coralDonald Ng, the Lead Agile Coach heading up the engagement for Cprime, worked directly with the UK team and all the Cprime coaches working onsite and remotely to set up both synchronous and asynchronous opportunities for collaboration on a cadence that fit everyone’s schedules and supported steady progress. 

Rather than attempting to take on everything at once, the plan was to start with a team of seven coaches working with about 60 team members. As the engagement progressed beyond the fundamentals, Cprime brought in two additional coaches to meet the program’s needs over the next three months. The teams were further organized into nineteen “squads” across three coaching groups as internal roles matured. 

Filling Necessary Agile Roles

At the start, the Cprime Agile Coaches took on the responsibilities of Scrum Master for the teams, besides coaching and training. Donald has worked closely with the client team to facilitate the hiring and training processes so internal associates could fill those roles as quickly as possible. 

Now, all the teams’ Scrum Masters and Product Owners are well-qualified internal team members and the Cprime coaches can focus wholly on coaching and training the teams for success. The three coaching groups now comprise two or three Cprime coaches, six internal Product Owners, and three Scrum Masters from six different squads.

Agile Training

To ground the Shanghai teams in the fundamentals of Agile and how to apply them in the manufacturing environment, the coaches facilitated several training courses over four months. These included:

  • Twelve core module courses covering three topics (Agile Mindset, Introduction to Scrum, and the client’s unique framework for scaling Agility)
  • Fifteen bite-size learning sessions on various topics developed to fill specific gaps, including Jira and Confluence fundamentals, Innovations Stories Sharing, and Kanban fundamentals.
  • Seven role-based sessions to train and support new Scrum Masters and Product Owners. 

Additionally, a Leadership Training program is slated to begin to broaden organizational support for the growing Agile practice.

Ongoing Stabilization and Scaling

As the Agile practice develops and scales, stabilization is required to ensure the organization maintains continuous improvement and reaps all the benefits of Agility. The core stabilizing factor is the Agile Community of Practice (CoP).

CoPs are groups of people organized around a specific technical or business domain. A healthy CoP actively focuses on professional networking, personal relationships, shared knowledge, and common skills, forming a strong and welcoming culture within the represented teams. As a result, knowledge workers enjoy autonomy, mastery, and purpose beyond their daily tasks.

In collaboration with the Scrum Masters, Cprime coaches have organized a strong and growing Agile Community of Practice supporting the Shanghai and UK teams’ ongoing stabilization.

The Results: Burgeoning Agile Maturity, Continuous Improvement, and Delighted Teams

By the end of November, the teams had worked together through eight sprints, each an improvement over the last. This trend of continuous improvement will continue and even accelerate as the new Agile leaders mature and the Cprime coaches are now free to focus only on coaching and development.

Excellent Net Promoter Scores (NPS) Following Training

Prior to Cprime’s involvement, the client had no formal process in place for measuring the efficacy and value of training and development. By introducing the NPS process, the coaches could measure the value of the Agile training programs they facilitated so that these, too, could continuously improve.

An NPS can range from -100 (very poor) to 100 (essentially perfect). The average NPSs for Cprime-led training courses in Shanghai were:

  • 72.7 on the twelve core module courses
  • 70.9 on the 15 bite-size sessions
  • 74.3 on the seven role-based course

Delighted Team Members

Another measurement tool introduced by the coaches is a Coaching Assessment that allows the team members to rate the value of the coaching they are receiving. The following comments from team members reflect their sentiments:

  • “The coaches encourage the teams and organize our meetings very well.”
  • “They work very hard to help the teams.”
  • “The Agile coaches are very good to new employees. They guide us through the projects, helping us understand the detailed background, and solving any problems or questions that come up along the way.”
  • “Team meetings are held efficiently within a timebox, and we are avoiding unnecessary meetings.” 
  • “The coaches have strong professional knowledge and are proactive in communicating with other groups, and escalating issues when necessary.”

The Shanghai teams are poised for continued growth and acceleration. With continued support from Cprime Agile Coaches and In collaboration with the Agile teams at the group level in the UK, we foresee ongoing success.

Ready to start your Agile transformation? Contact Cprime today!

A Perfect Blend—Aligning Teams and Improving Throughput With Cprime Cloud Migration and Enterprise Agile Coaching

Posted on June 22, 2023 by -

The Client

This Cprime client is one of the world’s foremost networking hardware, software, and telecommunications equipment providers. Since 1984, it has created an expansive portfolio of routers, switches, wireless access points, security products, collaboration tools, managed services, and IoT applications.

Today, the California-based technology company operates in over 100 countries. Recognized for its innovations and commitment to delivering high-quality products and services, the company serves a variety of data-intensive industries, including healthcare, finance, education, and government.

The company reported revenues of over $51 billion in 2022.

The Challenge: Finding a Common Language and Reconnecting Siloed Teams

Because of the size of its workforce and complex portfolio of products and services, the network and communications provider faced a set of challenges typical of many established enterprises. Decades of growth and incremental process changes had created a disconnect between its leadership, departments, and teams.

“Over the years, the company adopted a variety of tools and frameworks—everyone interacted and worked differently,” explains Chuck Badger, Managing Director at Cprime. “If a developer transferred from one business unit to another, they had to start over, both from a tooling and a process perspective.”

“It’s a common dilemma for organizations of this scale,” adds Elida Parish, Managing Director of Customer Success at Cprime. “Throughout the company, they developed pockets of people using different tools and trying different things. Every team had adopted its own process. Moving from area to area, they were speaking past each other—not even using the same terminology.”

 

“Every team had adopted its own way of working. Moving from area to area, they were speaking past each other—not even using the same terminology.” — Elida Parish, Cprime, Managing Director, Customer Success

 

Increasing Transparency to Improve Strategic Planning

Besides creating communication issues, the information silos between areas hindered the company executive’s efforts to evaluate the business and plan strategically. The lack of visibility affected the company’s time to market and its ability to plan and invest in future initiatives. Declining quality and increasing costs and delivery times across the organization were also key concerns.

“With everybody on a different page, there was no way for the company to roll up consistent reporting,” explains John Kosco, Cprime Enterprise Agile Transformation Consultant. “They just didn’t have visibility into what was happening in their different agile teams. They needed to raise transparency so leadership could prioritize and manage portfolios to ensure that everyone was doing the right work. And, they had to implement a unified framework to ensure the work was being done right.”

“Leadership recognized that they had to standardize,” says Parish. “The goal was to improve throughput and deliver value faster by adopting a cloud-first, single project management framework, to drive alignment by moving disconnected teams onto a centralized tech stack, and to more effectively identify and meet business needs by creating a unified picture of the business.”

Besides aligning its teams under a standard framework using a central tool, the company wanted to move its infrastructure online to take greater advantage of cloud technologies.

The Solution: Cprime Cross-Functional Teams for Holistic Cultural and Technical Transformation

To accomplish its goals, the company needed to perform three core tasks—promote a common, internally developed agile framework, onboard a centralized platform as a single source of truth for reporting and project management, and migrate all production data onto that platform and into the cloud without disrupting the business. It was a hybrid initiative—both cultural and technical—affecting the company’s largest engineering groups, and thousands of people.

 

“Cprime was there to help the company find the best approaches to solve its problems and act as a sounding board to help build the internal capability to enable its teams long term.” — Dan Weikart, Cprime Director & Enterprise Agile Coach

 

“The agile transformation addresses the organization’s cultural mindset and processes,” explains Anthony Crain, Cprime Business Agility Coach. “The Jira Cloud migration and technical tooling transformation provide a standardized platform for the teams to break down the work, identify strengths and weaknesses, and give management insight into exactly what the teams are doing to achieve the company’s desired business outcomes.”

Enabling Cultural Change with the PRIME Approach

The network communications provider turned to Cprime to enable the multi-faceted transformation. It was a decision driven by over a decade of experience working with Cprime as a partner for change within the organization.

“Cprime’s method, PRIME—Prepare, Roadmap, Iterate, Measure, Enable— aligned perfectly with the company’s goals,” says Kosco. “We formed a collaboration infrastructure where the Cprime coaches and cross-functional teams provided the resources to help the company implement a common agile taxonomy. In practical terms, Cprime was there to help them find the best approaches to solve problems, and to act as a sounding board to help them build the internal capability to enable their teams long term.”

Creating a Template for Agile Unity

Using the PRIME approach, Cprime prepared for the agile transformation by meeting with the company leaders to establish a blueprint for forming and educating teams and teams of teams within the organization. With an approved roadmap in place, Cprime began coaching teams on how to execute a new way of working using the new Jira Cloud tools.

“As coaches, Cprime engaged with the leaders and the teams, acting as a translation layer between theory and practice,” says Weikart. “We presented the new ways of working in a consistent, practical fashion that rolled up across the organization.”

Besides traditional instructor-led, role-based workshops, Cprime worked with the company to create 27 Learning Bytes—short guides that reinforce context-specific agile principles and practices. Another eight Agile Primers provide detailed, always-available references that clarify core agile roles and processes. Over 18 months, Cprime’s on-the-ground coaching team expanded from 3 to over 30 members.

 

“Because of the combined agile and tooling initiatives, positive change is visible everywhere. We delivered growth in earnings, revenue, and each of our key transformation metrics.” — Executive Sponsor

 

A Technical Jira Cloud Migration to Support a New Agile Methodology

Parallel to the coaches propagating the company’s new agile methodology, the Cprime Customer Success team worked to establish a Jira Cloud environment to centralize reporting and portfolio management, and to foster further alignment.

Leveraging their expertise as an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner, the Cprime Customer Success team worked to onboard the provider’s teams to its new Jira Cloud infrastructure. This included overseeing a complex data migration from disparate on-site Jira instances.

“In many cases, the Jira data was already there,” says Parish. “But it wasn’t a simple matter of just lifting and shifting the data to the cloud. They were bringing together all their different tools and migrating them into Jira Align.”

Collaborating for Optimal Outcomes

To ensure a successful migration, the multi-disciplinary Cprime team coordinated across time zones to maintain the integrity of the migrated data. The entire process required constant cooperation between the networking provider and the Cprime Customer Success team.

“Not only was Cprime migrating live data, we had to make sure we weren’t stepping on anyone’s toes as they used the system. They had many scrum and kanban boards in production that contained broken workflow validators and other issues. Those needed to be addressed before migration,” says Parish. “To accommodate their data in the cloud, we had to create customizations and methodically massage the live data to avoid duplications. Post migration, clean-up involved working hand-in-hand with the client to reconcile and map the new data meaningfully.”

Working together and communicating internally, the different Cprime teams could avoid issues common to projects involving multiple vendors.

Results: Unprecedented Levels of Visibility, Traceability, and Communication

By overseeing both the migration and the agile transformation, Cprime was in an ideal position to ensure the networking communications provider’s new Jira Cloud infrastructure aligned with its goals and the updated development framework. The combined results have given the company an unprecedented view into its workflows and allowed them to make new strategic connections.

“The insights and synergy the company gained by combining both the tooling transformation and on-the-ground agile coaching provided an exponential return on their investment,” says Parish. “By blending the perspectives, Cprime has helped them see their data in new ways and align more effectively with their other efforts to achieve new levels of visibility and traceability.”

Quantifying Rapid Cultural Change

Using the new tooling and agile methodology, the network communications provider successfully launched over 400 well-formed agile teams—roughly 2,800 Cisco employees—in a single quarter. 90% of those teams aligned their long-standing backlogs with management’s newly formed strategic themes. To assist the transformation, Cprime coaches led 18 role-specific training sessions, training 525 people in under six months. This enabled the company to pursue other internal training initiatives. Overall, Cprime significantly accelerated the company’s ability to deploy a new way of working across its teams.

“They had a highly fractured working environment,” says Weikart. “Now, they have a unified but flexible working environment where everyone speaks the same language, sees consistent information, and is on a path that suits their specific context.”

Increasing Throughput and Accelerating Delivery Schedules and Response Times

With improved collaboration and transparency, the company has also seen an increase in throughput across multiple product lines, accelerated delivery schedules, and improved response times to customer support inquiries. It is continuing to work with Cprime to further transform the organization.

“Because of the combined agile and tooling initiatives, positive change is visible everywhere,” remarks an executive sponsor. “We delivered growth in earnings, revenue, and each of our key transformation metrics. We have even raised our outlook for the next fiscal year because of our healthy backlog and the steps we have taken to improve.”

Would you like to see similar results for your organization?
Explore our flexible Agile transformation and Atlassian tooling solutions.

Cprime Creates Custom Training Pathways for a Multinational Consumer Electronics Icon

Posted on June 20, 2023 by -

The Client

This global technology leader builds popular consumer electronics devices like smartphones, computers, tablets, and wearable accessories, as well as software, productivity, and entertainment products. They have developed a reputation for innovation and a sleek design ethos that have made them an international household name.

The Challenge: Upskilling from Within — Creating New Career Opportunities in an Established Workforce

In response to a growing global shortage of technical talent and high attrition rates, this client looked inward to address some of its technical staffing needs.

“The rationale is simple—there’s a very competitive hiring landscape for specific roles in the technology workforce economy,” explains Chris Knotts, a Director in the Cprime Learning Practice. “As a result, the device manufacturer wanted to cultivate talent from within their own ranks. Selecting and promoting people already familiar with their culture not only improves employee retention over the long term, it is also more cost effective.”

It was not an idea new to the organization. The company already had a mechanism in place to recruit and upskill employees, but the program had a limited scope and capacity. The device manufacturer wanted to expand its internal retraining capabilities to include two emergent high-demand subject areas—Quality Assurance (QA) and Enterprise Program Management (EPM).

The fundamental challenge for the company, however, wasn’t a lack of expertise, it was a lack of bandwidth.

“They knew exactly what they wanted to do, they just needed help with the execution. They wanted someone to overcome the hurdles that prevented them from doing it themselves,” says Knott. “They needed external muscle to come in and perform the administration, needs assessment, and training design and then get in there and do the actual coaching.”

To achieve that within a limited timeframe, the company required an experienced training partner with established expertise and an inventory of relevant course materials. While they expected a customized training experience tailored to their needs, they did not want to begin from scratch.

Solution: Cprime—a Multi-Disciplined Team with the Right Educational Assets

Based on previous success working together to fulfill its Atlassian tooling needs, the manufacturer shortlisted Cprime as a candidate in its request for proposal (RFP) call. Cprime won the bid on the strength of its expansive subject expertise and proven track record.

“Cprime met all their personnel and asset requirements,” says Knotts. “We had the experience and instructors, and our learning catalog contained the exact course materials that they wanted us to design.”

The Cprime team began the course design phase by sitting down with the management and supervisory teams to further sharpen requirements and clarify expectations. Cprime then collaborated with the company over the course of two months to develop and deliver multiple iterations of the training.

 

“They knew exactly what they wanted to do, they just needed help with the execution, someone to overcome the hurdles preventing them from doing it themselves. They wanted skilled external muscle to come in and perform the administration, needs assessment, and training design and then get in there and do the actual coaching.” — Chris Knotts, Director, Cprime Learning Practice

 

Rapidly Iterating to Meet Client Requirements

Each of the iterations involved further defining the course design and objectives, selecting and refining course content, and creating assessment criteria to determine successful learning outcomes. A multi-disciplined Cprime team of nine people provided input to ensure the courses reflected the most up-to-date industry best practices. Leadership and subject experts from the device manufacturer’s internal talent development team provided regular input to maintain alignment between Cprime’s output and the company’s culture and ways of working.

“We worked directly with their QA and EPM stakeholders, embedding with the functional heads of the teams that we would train, so they could inject their input right from the beginning,” says Knotts. “We ended up with the Quality Assurance and Enterprise Project Management learning tracks based on Cprime library materials but entirely unique to the device manufacturer’s needs.”

The resulting course materials combined core Cprime course content with practical use cases that helped students relate them to real-world situations and expanded their understanding of how the principles fit the manufacturer’s greater project environment.

An experienced Cprime enterprise technology coach then delivered each session, beginning with core concepts and shifting into on-the-job mentorship, demonstrating key competencies on the job.

“The Cprime technology coaches got deeply involved with the teams, fostering the practical application of the software testing they were teaching,” says Knotts. “It wasn’t a matter of spoon-feeding them a lecture, It was very hands-on.”

 

“We worked directly with their Quality Assurance and Enterprise Program Management stakeholders — embedding with the functional heads of the teams that we would train — so they could include their input right from the beginning.” — Chris Knotts, Director, Cprime Learning Practice

 

Results: Off-the-shelf Training Content Combined With Custom Coach Delivery

With only two months to prepare, Cprime delivered two intensive, ten-day training sessions. The coaches began training the first cohorts of the device manufacturer’s internal promotion candidates on the new learning tracks in month three.

The Cprime trainers then oversaw concurrent online and localized training sessions at the client’s main California campus, training over 70 people across five cohorts.

Despite the very intensive preparation, planning, and tight timeframes, Cprime received positive feedback from the students and impressed the company leadership with their results.

“Our emphasis on the hands-on, real-world coaching component enhanced what could have easily been dry, theoretical training sessions has been really meaningful for the students,” says Knotts. “Both the students and the stakeholders really liked what we were doing and how we did it.”

Because of early successes with the pilot, the device manufacturer is already looking toward a continued partnership.

“They invited Cprime to plan a second set of sessions,” says Knotts. “They knew exactly what they needed and their standards were high. Because the project was under such heavy scrutiny, It’s been really satisfying to exceed their expectations.”

 

“Cprime’s emphasis on hands-on, real-world coaching component into what could have been dry, theoretical, training sessions has been really meaningful for the students. Both the students and the stakeholders really liked what we were doing and how we did it.” — Chris Knotts, Director, Cprime Learning Practice

If you’d like to see similar results for your organization, explore our flexible Learning Pathways and Technical Coaching solutions.