Scrum at Scale (S@S) is a framework for scaling Scrum and thus for agile transformation of an organisation.
The case study is about a government project to provide specialised health and social services for the elderly, implementing accessibility programmes. It also involved replacing a 20-year-old database used by direct clients - some 1,200 care managers - to track services provided to older people. Nexus was chosen because Scrum was already familiar in the organisation.
The Eimagine is a full-service information technology consulting firm based in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. They are committed to helping their clients refine and improve their business, whether it's implementing a technical solution, innovative development, or data security.
The existing system had the following problems: cumbersome manual processes, decentralised information systems, opaque organisational data, inconsistent reporting and data security concerns.
Eimagine had been using Scrum for many years in their previous activities, but in this particular project they had a team of 50 people. They found it difficult to coordinate their work using Scrum alone, and they had communication and transparency gaps. So they decided to use Nexus to synchronise their work and support their clients. The case study illustrates this process. This was a complex task, as requests and technical problems from customers had to be handled in parallel in different focus areas. But Nexus proved to be a good choice and a natural next step, as they already knew Scrum.
When they started using Nexus, the group of 50 people was divided into 5 separate Scrum teams with individual focus areas, with one Scrum Master per team. The Product Owner was on the client side and they worked in four-week Sprints, with Nexus Sprint Reviews held weekly.
In Nexus, teams were able to clarify dependencies and resolve them. This helped to move towards greater cross-functionality and self-management. In particular, the accountability of the Nexus Integration Team (NIT) has helped to improve transparency.
NIT has indeed encouraged bottom-up intelligence. Thanks to the collaboration of several Scrum teams, they eliminated any other Scrum team working in a vacuum and were able to keep real synchronizations between the teams. They realized that no one person could know all the details about the product and realized the importance of being transparent about issues. With NIT, they were able to increase cross-functionality between teams and were also able to prioritise the Product Backlog.
NIT also supported the teams' efforts to ensure that the value and core purpose of Scrum was maximised. By creating a single Nexus, dependencies were removed and the impact was significant. They saw a dramatic reduction in customer and care manager error flags requesting support, as NIT focused on prioritizing incoming comments from care managers, from providers and from assigning directions.
For Eimagine, the result of using Nexus was a 75% reduction in help desk entries by the end of the stabilisation period, enabling older people to access the social and health services they need more quickly. Administrative tasks became automated, reporting became consistent and all aspects of the customer journey became transparent.
The new system gave care managers access to the data in the data centre that they needed to provide care and services, saving an average of 20 hours of work per month.
This case study clearly demonstrates that Nexus has helped to accelerate the delivery of critical services, making a significant difference to 58,000 older citizens in need of social, health and community services. Read about the LogMeIn experience at this link.
