Meeting tight timeframes: Ministry of Social Development case study

Tight timeframes are one of the greatest challenges for any development project. Putting your project management processes under pressure really tests how robust and reliable they are. 

Developing the SuperGold digital experience for the Ministry of Social Development was a good example. 

MSD wanted to help seniors stay strong and independent by letting them find SuperGold savings anytime, anyplace. Crucially, we had just 5 months in which to deliver apps for both Apple and Android devices, a new web application, and the API to integrate the two.

The fact that we did so, and exceeded project targets in the process, shows the power of the Agile project management methodology we specialise in.

Managing risk on time-critical projects

Of the tools in our Agile risk management toolkit, the one with the strongest influence on the risk we’ll miss deadlines is limiting work in progress.

By breaking work into small batches and ensuring you fully complete each batch before moving on to the next one, you reduce context switching and significantly improve productivity.

This post by our CEO Nathan Donaldson shows how and why you can limit your work in progress.

Feedback on our first virtual Agile Professional Foundation

One of the good things about running ICAgile-certified Agile training is the built-in feedback loop that ICAgile provides. All attendees get to share anonymous feedback, which we can use to check in on and improve the training.

This was an especially big deal for our first virtual APF, because we’d completely recreated the course for remote learning:

• It now runs via Zoom.
• It’s over four consecutive mornings (NZ time).
• It features new activities and new collaborative tools like MURAL.

How would the punters find this new course?

Here’s the feedback:

ICAgile: What additional feedback do you have for the instructor?

“Nothing, it was a really great course.”

“The course was brilliant, super engaging, interactive, educational and I was very surprised at how this was achieved all online. Thank you for the course and my certification.”

“Rebecca - you make learning so much fun! You're engaging and vibrant, making the information that you're sharing easy to take in!”

“Well done! Thought it was a very clever way to present a course online. I came in with the expectation that it might get a bit boring spending so much time on VC, but that wasn't the case at all!”

“Only tiny critique would be that often the instructor would have started speaking before we were all back on-screen from the breakout rooms.”

“None.”

“SME”

“Great use of the application Mural and keeping everyone on track. You can tell from Rebecca and Ruka's knowledge that they are experienced scrum masters. It would have been great to have been able to see them in action in a work setting i.e. performing a stand up with their team, putting us through a requirements gathering exercise.”

“Clearly the course was re-constructed as a remote course rather than just doing the same in-person course but over Zoom. Communication was always clear and concise. Making the course shorter over more days when online was a fantastic idea.”

Limited sessions: Book your place now

There are only two APF sessions available this year:

• Mon 19 October – Thu 22 October
• Mon 14 December – Thu 17 December

Te Wiki o te Reo Māori

For everyone who took part, congratulations on a successful, socially-distanced Māori Language Week.

Here is a bit of a digital history of Māori Language Week from its earliest days, courtesy of the DigitalNZ tool we built for the National Library.