Resource Type: Case Study

Cprime Cloud Migration Improves Action Camera Pioneer’s Internal Communications and Organizational Data Flow

Posted on March 3, 2023 by -

The Client

Established in 2002 by sports enthusiasts wanting a rugged, compact, and easy-to-use method of capturing high-quality video in extreme environments, this Cprime client sets the gold standard in the industry.

Today, the market has grown to $3 billion, and this company has captured one-third of global sales — over $1 billion in both 2021 and 2022.

The Challenge: Improving Poor Application Performance and Overcoming Sluggish Vendor Support on a Tight Timeline

Action cameras occupy an extremely competitive market expected to reach over $7 billion before 2030. This rapid revenue growth is due to the professional and consumer appetite for versatile, feature-rich cameras and lenses with ever-increasing resolution and video quality.

To remain at the top of the market, the camera manufacturer sought to update its infrastructure. All in all, the goal was to enhance team collaboration, eliminate organizational silos, facilitate employee access to proprietary resources, address efficiency issues, and speed product development.

To achieve this, however, the company faced multiple challenges. These included the poor historical performance of its legacy Jira and Confluence applications.

Sluggish Vendor Support

“The biggest pain point was the hoops they had to jump through to troubleshoot or even locate specific data,” explains Crystal Zapata, Cprime Technical Project Manager.

 

“We went from waiting a day or more to receive support responses to receiving them within hours — much better than before. The support requests we see now are about the applications’ enhanced functionality rather than their poor performance.” — Company Project Sponsor

 

The provider’s declining service frequently resulted in multi-day delays in response to simple support requests. With teams from multiple disciplines working from locations around the globe, time differences only compounded the issue. The delays affected everyone, from the company’s developers to its sales partners and customer service agents.

Poor Application Performance

Additionally, the solutions themselves — poorly configured instances of the normally reliable Atlassian Jira and Confluence — were not performing well, causing productivity issues and frustration.

“They wanted ownership of a streamlined, systematic, and cloud-based process that worked without submitting a support ticket and waiting days for a response, and a reliable Jira dashboard and Confluence reports that everyone—from their manufacturing team members and development project managers up to their CEO and CIOs—could look at and say, ‘This is where we’re at, this is what we’re tracking.’ ”

A Tight Schedule — Shifting Data at Scale without Interrupting Critical Workflows

Challenges also grew from the sheer volume of data to migrate and the technical and logistical demands of delivering functioning Jira and Confluence cloud applications.

“We usually try to fit each migration into a single weekend to avoid disruption, but there was so much data that a Saturday and Sunday weren’t enough,” says Yevgen Lasman, Cprime Data Migration engineer. “From a technical perspective, they required extensive customizations with interlocking dependencies, including a complex repository of proprietary mathematical formulas and important technical documentation. We also had to work with their third-party vendors and application suppliers to identify and address issues as they arose.”

The timing was critical. Due to the seasonal nature of their business, the migration had to occur without disrupting revenue or production during the peak product development and sales cycles.

“Finding the right time to make it all happen was key,” says Zapata. “Everything had to fit into a window immediately after their development freeze time and just before the busiest time of the year.”

Solution: A Cprime-Atlassian Platinum Partnership for Cloud Migration Success

The camera manufacturer decided to take control of its data by migrating their legacy Jira and Confluence applications to Atlassian Cloud hosting. To solve its migration challenges and ensure the process went smoothly, the company engaged an experienced, full service global Atlassian Enterprise Platinum Solution Partner. Specifically, Cprime was the ideal candidate to extend the client’s Atlassian toolset with expertise in accredited services, application integrations, training, and custom solutions.

To start the transformation, the Cprime migration team formed a comprehensive action plan beginning with a deep-dive audit. Consequently, over three weeks, they worked with the manufacturer’s steering committee, network specialists, technical project managers, and product stakeholders to assess its peer data, add-ons, and potential risks.

“Together, we identified their Atlassian application layouts and mappings and determined the most effective way to migrate their customizations, applications, and journal components,” says Zapata. “This included forming a plan for migrating the data the company had in use and important archival data from early camera iterations that they needed to keep for reference.”

A Flexible Migration Plan for Real-World Conditions

Once the manufacturer’s teams approved the migration roadmap, Cprime began iteration testing to identify potential pain points and establish realistic timelines for each phase of the move to the cloud.

“Finding the right time to make it all happen was key. Everything had to fit into a window immediately after their development freeze time and just before the busiest time of the year.” — Crystal Zapata, Cprime Technical Project Manager

“Migrating production systems, there is always an element of risk, but we mitigate that as much as possible,” says Zapata. “Here, we stepped the client through our test iterations, ensured the stakeholders understood and approved the process, and provided their business units with a clear schedule.”

Throughout the migration, the Cprime team remained flexible, adjusting the strategy and timelines to align with the manufacturer’s shifting production schedules.

“We were ready to go live in September, but, for business reasons including the peak sales season over Black Friday and Christmas, the manufacturer froze systematic changes to its production environments,” says Lasman. “We altered the roadmap to fit their timeframe. In the meantime, we laid everything out and tested it to ensure the company had the confidence to move forward when they were ready.”

With such large volumes of data involved, the scheduled migration intervals often exceeded low-activity periods between Friday evening and Monday morning. When work bled into the busier periods, Cprime ensured that the system remained unaffected by shifting only low-impact archived data that did not affect business activities or application performance.

Continued Support

Cprime support continued after the camera manufacturer signed off on the migration.

“We stayed on site for an additional two weeks, providing bespoke training documentation explaining changes to the process flow to avoid confusion,” Zapata says.

Results: Improved Issue Resolution, Application Performance, and Data Security

Despite the challenges, the company saw immediate results from its Jira and Confluence cloud migration.

Greater Visibility and Control

Taking control of their hosting and system administration provided the first set of benefits.

“They now have access to advanced features of Atlassian Cloud,” says Zapata. “They can also leverage customizations the cloud offers that their legacy provider couldn’t.”

More Responsive Customer Support

By switching to direct Enterprise tier Atlassian support rather than going through a third party, the company has seen response times to support tickets improve radically. Application speeds have also increased with internal and external Jira Service Management users describing the performance as “snappy.”

“We went from waiting a day or more to receiving support responses within hours — much better than before. We are very happy with the changes,” says a project sponsor. “The support requests we see now are about the applications’ enhanced functionality rather than its poor performance.”

Data Security and Application Performance Gains

Moving its Jira and Confluence data to the cloud also improved data access and security. By migrating its data, the camera manufacturer added a layer of protection through the redundancy and fail-over protection characteristic of managed cloud solutions.

Based on the results of the camera manufacturer’s cloud transformation, the company continues to turn to Cprime regularly for insights into its next steps.

“Even with the move to the cloud complete, we frequently meet with the company to discuss new use cases and advancements in the software,” says Zapata. “Cprime is happy to be on board to help them navigate future upgrades.”

Want to see the same results for your organization? Explore our flexible Atlassian Cloud Migration solutions.

A Global Banking Leader Accelerates Digital Transformation Through a Custom Blended Learning Program

Posted on February 24, 2023 by -

The Client

Few financial institutions offer greater depth and breadth of services than this U.S. based global banking and investment leader. Besides retail and commercial banking services, they are also a custodian bank for many of the financial industry’s largest hedge and investment funds.

We began working with the organization in 2014 and the relationship has grown and strengthened over the years. In 2019, it took a huge leap forward when we took on a new initiative to deliver the company’s proprietary software engineering onboarding and training courses globally across six time zones. (To learn more about that epic undertaking, read the case study here.)

The Challenge: Onboarding and Upskilling a Global Development Organization

The need for qualified software engineers and DevOps professionals has been speeding up globally for years and shows no signs of slowing down. The financial services industry is no exception, and a large digital transformation necessitates new roles and qualified professionals to fill them. So, our client found themselves in a familiar position: needing to prepare a large number of existing team members to thrive under a new way of working even while zealously working to transform their development organization to support enterprise agility.

With a software engineering workforce numbering in the thousands—and constantly growing—this was no small task.

Fortunately, Cprime had already cultivated a strong and mutually beneficial relationship with the company that already spanned nearly six years.

Alex Gray, Cprime’s Lean Agile Practice Lead on the engagement, explains, “It was really the relationship and reputation we’d cultivated with the software engineers onboarding training that encouraged them to approach us about this new program. We were glad to get the opportunity.”

So, when this initiative began in 2022, they trusted us to get it off the ground.

The Solution: Custom “Blended Workshop” Learning Academies Delivered with Speed and Finesse

Unlike our previous learning engagements with this client, they asked us to generate custom coursework rather than facilitating courses they had already developed internally. The initial request was for an e-learning course for Scrum Masters (referred to as Agile Leads within the company), so that’s where we began.

An initial plan for the learning Academies

“Our first step,” Alex says, “was to develop a storyboard outlining the general learning objectives for the e-learning course, and how the modules would progress. We put that together and reviewed it with the client leadership team.”

After iterating on the storyboard, they fleshed out the content within that framework. The goal for the e-learning course was to cover the core fundamentals any new or existing Agile Lead would need to know to succeed in their role. Rob Hill, a Cprime Learning Consultant, explains, “This was a combination of standard Agile concepts and best practices combined with terminology and processes unique to the organization, designed to get Agile Leads at various levels of experience up-to-speed quickly.”

Once we developed the initial content and the client approved, we collaborated with a partner vendor that created the actual course using Adobe Captivate. These experienced practitioners made suggestions around visuals, format and frequency of quizzes, and the general flow of the learning path. Where it added value, we implemented the changes before coming back to the client with a completed SCORM file. They uploaded that to their Learning Management System (LMS) so they could securely host the course internally and students could access it through their Learning and Development portal.

“It was really the relationship and reputation we’d cultivated with the software engineers onboarding training that encouraged them to approach us about this new program. We were glad to get the opportunity.” -Alex Gray, Cprime Lean Agile Practice Lead

Developing the blended workshop approach

“Although the e-learning course was very good,” Alex says, “we felt there would be tremendous value in giving the students the opportunity to interact with each other and expert instructors. So, we developed a complementary instructor-led workshop as well.”

Students completed the e-learning course remotely and at their own pace. Then, in small, structured cohorts, they would come together in the workshops (virtually or in-person) to discuss what they’d learned, ask questions, and run through several interactive exercises.

Rob continues, “This blended learning approach offers students the best of both worlds: the ease and convenience of e-learning and the enrichment of a more traditional face-to-face workshop so they can apply their knowledge to real-world scenarios and get some experience working with the new concepts. More practical, less theoretical.”

Expanding to meet growing demand

Templates_Medium_black_coralThe Agile Leads course thrilled the client, so they requested more courses in the same format for additional roles. Thus far, we have developed blended learning courses for:

  • Agile Lead
  • Product Owner
  • Agile Lead Coaching
  • UX Designer
  • Engineering Lead
  • Product Adoption
  • System Architect

Additionally, we have developed these instructor-led courses:

  • Agile Architect
  • Agile Designer
  • Agile Engineering Lead
  • Agile Product Owner
  • Agile Scrum Master
  • Agile Stakeholder
  • Agile Story Writing
  • Agile Customer Centricity
  • Defining your Product Roadmap
  • Implementing Kanban
  • Agile Team Transformation
  • Agile Product Adoption
  • Agile Stakeholder Management
  • Agile Coaching
  • Shift Left

Alex adds, “As the organization continues scaling their Agile practice and the teams mature, they have requested courses covering more mature subjects and advanced roles.”

The Results: Top Scores from Students and Enhanced Trust from Leadership

The results of this training program have been remarkable. Over 4,700 students have gone through the programs Cprime has developed since 2020. And feedback has remained very positive nearly across the board.

Feedback scores of 4+

“We request feedback from every student, and it has thrilled us to find nearly all of them have rated the course material and the instructors at four or better out of five,” Alex says. “We’ve heard comments like, ‘this wasn’t like any other classes I’ve taken—I feel like I can go out immediately and use what I’ve learned.’ That’s really gratifying.”

Of course, perfection is unrealistic. In one case, a trainer we brought in simply didn’t mesh well with the teams and we saw some negative feedback as a result. So, we immediately rectified the matter and feedback scores rose again.

“In some ways, negative feedback is even more valuable because it supports our and the client’s mutual commitment to continuous improvement.”

From trainers to trusted advisors

Alex concludes, “I think the most telling result of this engagement is how our relationship with the client has expanded. They already considered us excellent trainers. But now, they view us as trusted advisors, which is exactly what we want to be. Whether it be refining the courses in play or considering where new courses may be of value, we’re working together to deliver the greatest value to the organization.”

Could Your Company Benefit from Results Like These?

Explore our training solutions today and speak to a learning expert so we can help your organization achieve something similar.

A Global Transportation Leader Stabilizes Large-scale Transformation Through Strategic Training

Posted on February 21, 2023 by -

The Client

Since its formation in 2011, this company has grown into one of the world’s largest transportation groups. Operating leading airlines in Ireland, Spain, and the United Kingdom, its premium and budget brands connect over 350 destinations worldwide. Moreover, they serve nearly 120 million passengers and move countless tonnes of cargo annually.

The Challenge: An Unexpected Market Upheaval Provides an Opportunity to Upgrade Internal Processes

Every airline struggled through the long and unpredictable travel restrictions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, and this group was no exception. However, looking ahead, leadership focused the time on improving the company’s internal tools and processes to ensure they came out of the situation stronger and in a better position to weather change in the future. Meanwhile, they also created a new business unit dedicated to their global tech operations. 

To learn more about the digital and scaled Agile transformation they took on, read the case study here.

A vital part of every successful enterprise-wide transformation is a robust training program to enable and empower employees at all levels of the organisation to succeed in the new reality the transformation is creating. However, the global tech business unit did not have a formal learning and development program set up. 

So, they turned to Cprime—their trusted transformation partner—to quickly spin up a training program that could start making a difference immediately.

The Solution: An Innovative Approach to Rapid Training Success Across 19 Tracks

Unlike many learning and development engagements Cprime has headed up, a quick turnaround was of high priority because the client was pursuing a tight timeline for their digital transformation. By the time the organisation was ready to pursue this new training program, the goal was to have employees fully trained on new roles, concepts, and processes (which were still being established) progressively over a period of 18 to 24 months, starting as soon as possible.

Rather than creating bespoke training courses with original custom content—an excellent but time-consuming option—the training team decided to focus on sourcing, curating, and coordinating delivery of existing courses that would fill the client’s needs as quickly as possible.

Progressive, role-based training in three phases

“We started by outlining a series of learning pathways in three phases,” recalls Alex Gray, Cprime’s Lean Agile Practice Lead on the engagement. “They had to be role-specific, developed in priority order. They also needed to be tailored to ensure students would be able to absorb the elementary level coursework immediately, and would then be knowledgeable enough to successfully progress through intermediate and advanced coursework as the transformation progressed around them.” 

As a result, pathways were developed to guide students to take on 19 different roles within the transformed tech business unit:

“Each level of each pathway included a group of core modules that contained the basic concepts, required skills, and practical guidelines around fulfilling each role in the transformed organisation. Then, a range of additional modules provided supplemental knowledge and deeper dives into each role, which the students could take on at their own pace.”

But how were the learning pathways developed so quickly? 

A new training role created to fill the need

Alex continues, “Since we were not creating any of the content, we needed to approach building these learning pathways in a different way. I worked closely with Aradhana Sabherwal—one of Cprime’s experienced Agile Coaches—to fill a new role we haven’t needed in the past. We called it the Learning Curator.”

The responsibility of the Learning Curator was to:

  • Identify any learning challenges across the business unit
  • Suggest the skills that could help the organisation meet those challenges
  • Liaise with internal SMEs to understand the client’s learning context
  • Seek out Agile learnings that could instil those skills in the teams
  • Describe the modes and formats in which the learning would be delivered to the teams
  • Design the learning pathways
  • Build the system and access points to support the teams’ learning and application

“Once we had an outline of the pathways completed, it became a matter of leveraging Cprime’s own catalogue of existing instructor-led courses where possible, and seeking out third-party classes and interactive video courses to fill in the gaps where necessary.”

Coordination and management to keep the program on track

This unique combination of formats and providers required the efforts of an exceptional Learning Manager—a role well-suited to Cprime’s Vicky Brownsell.

“Vicky serves as the coordinator that ensures the ongoing training program runs smoothly, because there are a lot of moving parts.”

“Once we had an outline of the pathways completed, it became a matter of leveraging Cprime’s own catalogue of existing instructor-led courses where possible, and seeking out third-party classes and interactive video courses to fill in the gaps where necessary.” -Alex Gray, Cprime Lean Agile Practice Lead

The Learning Manager’s responsibilities include:

  • Hosting in our learning management system (LMS) and training management system (TMS)
  • Coordination of the training schedules to support each student’s progressive learning path 
  • Booking participants onto Cprime and external courses
  • Following up with participants to make sure they have booked, attended, and completed classes
  • Engaging with Cprime instructors and third party vendors to solidify schedules 
  • Agreeing the best possible rates with third party vendors to ensure the client is getting the best deal without compromising on quality
  • Coordinating billing and invoicing between the client and training providers

“Vicky’s work has been invaluable over the last three quarters as the training program has only grown in size and complexity,” Alex says.

The Results: Smooth, Progressive Training with Clear Practical Impact

clipboard icon“The most powerful evidence of the success of this program is the fact that the students who have gone through the program are successfully applying what they’ve learned to their evolving roles within the changing organisation.” 

So far (as of January 2023) 265 students have benefited from a total of 932 hours of education in the ten months since the program launched. Cprime has also worked simultaneously with the client to develop internal capabilities so they will be able to take over the management responsibilities to keep the program running continuously going forward.

Alex adds, “Something else that underlines the value Cprime brought to this engagement was the fact that our executive sponsor started out requesting continuous input as every detail was arranged. But, she very quickly grew comfortable with the level of quality, efficiency, and professionalism we brought to the table. Now, she only wants a weekly update to keep her in the loop, and she’s thrilled with the outcomes so far.”

Consequently, as the client’s transformation progresses, these qualified and experienced students are forming a strong foundation of expertise to solidify the new way of working.

Could Your Company Benefit from Results Like These?

Whether you’re undergoing a large-scale transformation or just looking to upskill your teams to increase productivity, efficiency, and quality, Cprime’s pre-developed and custom learning solutions can get you there. Contact us today to explore your options.

Collaboration: The Key to a Successful Atlassian Cloud Migration at Croesus

Posted on February 3, 2023 by -

Overview

Croesus has spent thirty years building a solid international reputation based largely on its cutting-edge proprietary wealth management software solution. Their clients account for over a trillion dollars in assets managed with the Croesus solutions, so their development team has a heavy responsibility to maintain continuous security and efficiency. 

As a staunch advocate of Lean/Agile development practices, the Croesus development team relies heavily on Atlassian products, Jira and Confluence, to support their planning and day-to-day operations. Seeking the enhanced reliability, security, and functionality available on the Atlassian Cloud platform, they determined to undertake a migration to the cloud. We had a GO!

Cprime Canada enjoys a position as the leading cloud migration partner with hundreds of successful migrations under our belt. But, according to Croesus sponsor, that wasn’t the key deciding factor when they chose to partner with Cprime.

“Cprime advocates Agile and DevOps principles; that’s how they approach each project and journey. I knew that we’d be able to partner closely with Cprime without having to sacrifice our internal processes or be a burden on the team. They could meet us where we were, empower the team, and share that knowledge in terms of workflow, making for a smooth and successful migration.”

Marie-Christine Legault (M.C.), Cprime’s account liaison and Head of Canada, concurs. “It was important from the start for us to work with a practical and actionable plan for Croesus. We wanted to ensure workFLOW and that we worked as ONE unit with our Migration Team and the Croesus Team. We could adapt schedules and key steps to accommodate each member of their migration team in a trustful manner.”

“I knew that we’d be able to partner closely with Cprime without having to sacrifice our internal processes or be a burden on the team. They could meet us where we were, empower the team, and share that knowledge in terms of workflow, making for a smooth and successful migration.”

The Solution

Over a three-month period, Cprime and Croesus collaborated to complete a successful migration to Atlassian Cloud and licensing agreement. And, we put together a wonderful world renowned roster of guest keynotes and Cprime speakers for an insightful DevOps/Agile full-day event for employees.

Communication was key

One of the first steps in the process was to set up a Google Chat group including all members of the Cprime and Croesus teams so we could work closely to accommodate professional and personal agendas. This was key for maximum efficiency and real time management for all.

“The chat group was instrumental in maintaining communication and transparency from the start,” M.C. Legault says. “Everyone felt free to ask questions on the fly and this allowed us to make decisions that shortened the time frame, lessened risk, and gave visibility to all. The chat brought us together as one unit for the duration of the project and beyond. We got along well — a true international collaboration as we had our expert teammates working from our four Cprime Global offices.”

Starting with a good cup of coffee, we planned a great strategy

The initial conversations were followed by a lightweight assessment to ensure a thorough understanding of the client’s existing systems and how they interacted with the data. Yevgen Lasman, an Atlassian Tools/Migration Specialist with Cprime, recalls, “Croesus was working with a few instances of Jira already in the cloud and one on-premise. So, we developed a migration strategy that would begin with a consolidation, a testing timeline, then a full migration of all data to the new cloud instance.”

Incorporating add-ons

They also relied on a few Jira add-on applications that had to be factored into the plans. Chief among them was Xray, which they were using for test management. Since Xray is available on the cloud, the add-on data could be smoothly parceled along with the main data migration.

Software licensing and BIG savings

Cprime Licensing Team was working behind the scenes and assisted with selecting the optimal licensing options for the new Atlassian Cloud software instances, even finding a way that was more economical for Croesus. They continue to manage the licenses as needed.

A Spring Break migration weekend

With the preliminary planning, consolidation, and test migrations complete, the production migration occurred over the course of one weekend in March of 2022. 

Yevgen Lasman recalls, “In the first moments of the migration, we had a few little hiccups that were identified and expected, but we were able to resolve everything safely on the spot. Both teams were all hands on deck for the smooth ride of the migration. When Monday came around, everyone was charged up and in shape.” Job done and high five TEAMS.

The Croesus project sponsor says, “During the sprint demo, our internal team
would highlight a few impediments or little issues that had come up. The says, “During the sprint demo, our internal team would highlight a few impediments or little issues that had come up. The teams were always able to resolve everything with Cprime quickly and completely. Challenges were immediately followed up with a solid plan for mitigating the risk and moving continuously ahead. I never needed to fix anything myself or get involved or participate in weekly project meetings; I never had to worry about it or put out any fires, which confirmed to me that we’d chosen the right partner. As an executive sponsor, that made my job so much easier.”

M.C. Legault agrees. “Letting our teams be hands-on, identifying what needs to be done, and empowering them was at the heart of this partnership. That’s really the value of working side-by-side and becoming one team and listening. We’ve done so many of these migrations, licensing deals, with add-ons and plugins, we’ve truly seen it all. But what needs to shine is our mindset and transparency with the Croesus team …there is a lot of value when you build a relationship and trustful collaboration.”

“The teams were always able to resolve everything with Cprime quickly and completely… I never needed to fix anything myself or get involved or participate in weekly project meetings; I never had to worry about it or put out any fires, which confirmed to me that we’d chosen the right partner. As an executive sponsor, that made my job so much easier.”

The Results

The migration to Atlassian Cloud was completed successfully and rapidly. A solid result is that Croesus has since decommissioned their on-premise servers, lessening internal infrastructure, and is working completely on the cloud platform. 

The development team reports a seamless transition with no impact on their workflow, lots of learning, and new skill sets that were shared by the Cprime migration team. Now, Croesus is benefiting from the platform’s enhanced security and performance without compromising functionality.

Croesus concludes, “Cprime collaborated closely with our team, working in an Agile fashion the entire time. Communication, well-being, and transparency were a constant, and any issues were quickly resolved — from technical challenges to scheduling conflicts, and everything in between. We couldn’t be happier with how the project played out.”

Explore our migration solutions today to benefit from similar results.