Customer
The US Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s mission is to promote the financial integrity and operational efficiency of the U.S. government through exceptional accounting, financing, collections, payments, and shared services.
Challenge
The software development teams at the Bureau were using Scrum for several months. Though the software teams were using Scrum for several months, they were struggling with creating a shippable product increment at the end of each sprint. Additionally, they did not have any formal training on Scrum and did not have trained Scrum Masters. Therefore, these teams faced several challenges.
The Bureau’s Project Management Branch had approximately 20 PMs in the branch and a portfolio of approximately 70 active projects. Four of the PMs served in the capacity of Scrum Master on their projects. These PMs had other projects they managed as well so they were not dedicated to their Scrum Teams. They had shared resources (rather than dedicated members on the Scrum teams) which is one of the challenges the teams faced.
Solution
Agilious delivered a customized Certified Scrum Master (CSM) training to three software development teams; the three multi-disciplinary teams were composed of both Federal employees as well as contractors who performed Scrum Master, Product Owner, development team member roles that included software engineers, Business Analysts, Quality Assurance testers and data analysts.
In addition to the CSM training, Agilious supported the teams with four weeks of dedicated Agile Coaching after the training. Agilious provided a highly experienced and seasoned Agile Coach who embedded himself with the teams and worked on site for four weeks. The Agile Coach attended the team’s product backlog refinement sessions, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective.
Impact
The dedicated and focused Agile Coaching helped the newly trained Scrum Masters and team members to implement the Scrum framework in their day to day work.
Agilious’ Agile Coach successfully diagnosed the root-cause of the teams’ ”unhealthy” Agile practices. The Agile Coach focused his mentoring and coaching of the Scrum teams to teach and inspire the team to implement good, proven practices. Further, the Scrum team members collaboratively and with the guidance of Steve initiated the development of an Agile Playbook that outlines the practice of Scrum in their environment, inclusive of the minimum governance mandates.
“I am pleased to announce we have made significant progress since we last spoke. All the feedback received from Steve and our developers has resulted in a draft Agile Playbook that is currently being vetted for use. This is a significant accomplishment for us and looking forward to sharing with our PM community of practice.”
-Christopher S., Lead IT Project Manager, Project and Provider Management Division, Project Management Branch, Bureau of Fiscal Service