MIX AGILE WITHPRINCE2® FORREWARDING RESULTS

Acando Case Study

Aimia is a global leader in loyalty management. Aimia’s uniquecapabilities include provenexpertise in deliveringproprietary loyalty services, launching and managing coalition loyalty programs, creating value through loyalty analytics anddriving innovation in the emerging digital and mobile spaces.

Acando is working with Aimia helping to deliver £6–10m worth of projects. In this recent exampleAcando’s Tony Davis drew upon 20 years of experience to mix methodologies and deliver a development project for the Nectar brand to deliver a cost effective way to integrate systems and bring together data and content in a way that creates value for collectors and partners, promotes innovation and opens up new revenue sources.

Businesses are often attracted to the benefits of Agile and Acando has helped many get great results from the flexible methodology. In many cases, this flexible approach offers faster benefit realisation, an instant understanding of ROI, the ability to move with the changing needs of the business and,

“ DAY-TO-DAY ACANDO WAS ABLE TO HELP THE PROJECT DEVELOP POSITIVELY BY ENSURING COMMUNICATIONS AND UNDERSTANDING WAS AT THE TOP OF THE AGENDA”

most importantly, the ability to continuously improve and sharpen a solution.

For Aimia and its experienced Agile development team the challenge of designing new APIs for Nectar offered an instant fit. However, Agile only works well if everybody in the projects team, from sponsor to developer, project manager to tester, fully understand the approach, their roles in it and the process they are embarking on.

In the wider business, PRINCE2® project management is the chosen methodology of Aimia. This posed a potential problem that Acando and Tony stepped in

to resolve. Working side-by-side with the Aimia team, Tony aided the company to deliver an ambitious project, helping to navigate, understand and optimise how Agile fitted into the wider company approach. Day-to-day Acando was able to help the project develop positively by ensuring communications andunderstanding was at the top of the agenda.

He said: “The reason most projects fail is poor communication. Add to that the use of multiple methodologies and it was clear that investing in clarification and communication would be time well spent on this project.”

Working as a positive force and a key part of the team, Tony was able to act as a bridge between the

traditional PRINCE2® style of management and the more flexible Agile approach.

“ My aim was to realise the benefits of all the methodologies, reducing the impact of the negatives. By tuning the approach we were able to ensure the sponsor knew what they were getting by when, and that we stayed within budget. At the same time we gave the development team the flexibility to try, test, redevelop and deliver the right result for the user.”

The key to success was getting everybody behind the key benefits of Agile and making sure they understood what they were signing up to from the start.

“ Agile is an iterative, collaborative process that is responsive to change. It allows for continual adaptation of the brief and response to user experience. Agile harnesses the knowledge, experience and creativity of the users of the solution as well as those developing it. It is seen to support the way that

Agile delivers quickly, yet robustly, in incremental chunks to gain an early return on investment.

“

reactive businesses work. Implemented correctly, it delivers quickly, yet robustly, in incremental chunks to gain an early return on investment.”

The result was an on-time,on-budget project that realised allof its business benefits and, inaddition, helped Aimia explorenew ways of working for the future.

• EARLY RETURN ON INVESTMENT (ROI)• BUSINESS AGILITY IS EMBRACED• RISK IS REDUCED• INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY• CREATES A SUSTAINABLE

DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT• ENABLES EMERGENT INNOVATION• BUILDS TRUST AND RELATIONSHIPS• EXPECTS CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT• MOTIVATING AND ENGAGING• ADDRESSES THE REALITIES OF SOFTWARE

DEVELOPMENT AND THE NEEDS OF THE BUSINESS

THE KEY BENEFITS OF AGILE FOR THIS PROJECT...

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