Insight Articles

UK Government G-Cloud

29 OCT 2012 | Posted in Agile, cloud computing, Government | Author Rob Smith

IndigoBlue is delighted to announce its inclusion on the UK Government’s G-Cloud ii Framework, making it easier for public sector bodies to purchase consultancy services from us. All our services are now listed on the CloudStore (gcloud.civilservice.gov.uk/cloudstore/)

Best Agile Coach/Mentor 2012

26 OCT 2012 | Posted in agile awards, mentoring | Author Rob Smith

IndigoBlue consultant John Wright has been named Best Agile Coach/Mentor at the 2012 Agile Awards.

John Wright

IndigoBlue at the Agile Business Conference

15 OCT 2012 | Posted in Agile Business Conference 2012, agile governance, incremental delivery, uncertainty management | Author Rob Smith

This year's Agile Business Conference was the best yet. There was a great level of attendance with a good number of large enterprises attending. There were some great talks, from both Agile specialists and user companies.

The conference is a great platform for Agile and really demonstrates the increasing take up of Agile in businesses of all sizes in the UK.

We had two speakers - James Yoxall and Mike Robinson - and I thought it would be useful to bring together their talks and related material.

Agile with PRINCE2

10 OCT 2012 | Posted in agile governance, Agile with PRINCE2 | Author James Yoxall

This paper presents IndigoBlue’s approach to integrating Agile with PRINCE2®. It explains why the two approaches can be used together at a conceptual level, and follows with a discussion of the key differences and how they can be resolved. This paper assumes that the reader has a prior level of knowledge of the two approaches.

It is often supposed that Agile and PRINCE2 conflict directly with each other, and cannot be used effectively together. The basis of this view is that PRINCE2 is ‘process-heavy’, while Agile is ‘process-light’.

IndigoBlue Governance Framework

10 OCT 2012 | Posted in agile governance, agile governance framework, incremental delivery, project initiation, uncertainty management | Author Rob Smith

IndigoBlue’s governance framework was created in response to the lack of an adequate set of governance processes for Agile projects and programmes. The absence of good governance is particularly apparent on larger programmes or within organisations running a number of Agile projects.

Agile Governance From The Top Down

10 OCT 2012 | Posted in agile governance, scaling agile, uncertainty management | Author James Yoxall

Agile as a project approach enables value creation whilst also empowering sponsors and senior stakeholders to affect governance over the investment. However, this depends on effective mechanisms for translating the team view into a stakeholder view of progress, risk and opportunity. This paper identifies the challenges and solutions in achieving this translation.

Agile Business Change and Business Agility

10 JUL 2012 | Posted in advantages of Agile, agile business change, agile governance, agility, business strategy, delivery capability, enterprise architecture, IT, IT strategy, social CRM, strategic change, usability | Author Alex McLachlan |

1 Comment

Today's highly competitive and rapidly changing markets that see the rise and fall of the likes of Nokia and MySpace places business imperatives on companies. In particular, companies need to be innovative, introducing new products, updating others to react to changes in the market (or predicting or even creating these market changes).

Much has been written on innovation, from the incremental improvements of Toyota and others through the use of Lean methods, to the disruptive innovation exemplified by Steve Jobs and Apple. What is often neglected, however, is that to deliver innovation, it is essential to have an underlying capability of business agility.

The Cloud – you already use it, so why doesn’t your business?

28 MAY 2012 | Posted in business strategy, business value, cloud computing | Author Mike Seery |

1 Comment

There’s a danger that the overuse and misuse of the word “cloud” can lead to apathy and ultimately put your business at a disadvantage by not harnessing the overwhelming benefits that cloud computing can deliver. This paper highlights how cloud computing is a mature technology, with the launch of Hotmail in 1996 heralding the dawn of an new era in the consumerisation of technology and explains in plain terms what cloud computing is.

Business Change in the Cloud

18 MAY 2012 | Posted in agile business change, business change, cloud computing | Author Alex McLachlan

There were three excellent presentations at yesterday's seminar Business Change in the Cloud, and an interesting question and answer session. Summary notes and the presentation slides are:

Agile Governance - Article

09 MAY 2012 | Posted in agile governance, change management, uncertainty management

As the use of Agile increases so too does the need for appropriate governance. The answer does not lie in standard Agile methodologies.

There is growing interest in exploiting Agile development across both the public and private sector. But concerns about governance are either restricting its use to non-critical projects or resulting in its use for technical delivery only within a more traditional waterfall based project. Either way, the intended benefits of Agile are not being realised by many organisations.

Can any control be imposed without losing the inherent flexibility of the Agile approach?

How to Improve Services with Fewer Resources

24 NOV 2011 | Posted in agile business change, business strategy, business transformation, business value, NFP | Author Alex McLachlan |

1 Comment

There were three excellent presentations at yesterday's NFP seminar, and a stimulating and interesting debate about how to get the best out of what is likely to be diminished funding levels in the future. Summary notes and the presentation slides are:

BBC Olympics Website and Web 3.0

21 NOV 2011 | Posted in HTML5, internet, knowledge, semantic web, taxonomy, web 3.0, website | Author Alex McLachlan

The BBC Olympics 2012 website represents a significant undertaking. It's planned to have more than 12,000 pages with individual pages for athletes, teams and event, and thousands of hours of on-demand video. With a dynamic website of this size, the management and “orchestration” of the content is a huge challenge. Particularly when it covers reports, results and statistics, all with live updates.

Book Review: RecrEAtion by Chris Potts

16 MAY 2011 | Posted in books, business strategy, business transformation, Chris Potts, enterprise architecture | Author Alex McLachlan

recrEAtion: Realizing the Extraordinary Contribution of Your Enterprise Architects (Take It With You) is another very engaging book by Chris Potts.

It takes the same narrative style as his first book fruITion: Creating the Ultimate Corporate Strategy for Information Technology which makes it an easy read. (See also: blog post on FruITion).

IT Strategy for Wealth Management Companies

07 MAY 2011 | Posted in IT strategy, wealth management | Author Anthony Flack

The wealth management industry is experiencing significant growth, and to meet the challenges in control and risk management it must undergo major changes in its use of IT. It is a sector that often has legacy IT systems and processes that require significant effort and cost to sustain a steady state.

Providing Best Service in Membership Organisations

10 APR 2011 | Posted in business strategy, business value, CMS, CRM, John Seddon, membership organisation, NFP, self service, service | Author Alex McLachlan

Customer service is most often thought about in the context of large corporate call centres many of whom provide excellent service (Amazon and first direct are often held up as prime examples), but equally with some well known cases who provide appalling service to their customers with long waiting queues, tortuous telephone menus and dreadful operatives (it’s probably best not to name the guilty here). Significant research and practical experience have gone into understanding best practice for customer service.

Membership organisations are, by their very nature, organisations that provide services for their members (and potentially other customers). Providing the best possible service experience is something that is not often considered, but is of great importance to help to ensure that members renew their membership and that the services can be provided cost effectively.

Using Agile in Government Agencies

02 MAR 2011 | Posted in agile project management, Government, IfG | Author John Wright

IndigoBlue has released a case study and white paper “Using Agile in Government Agencies” describing the successful piloting of Agile methods at the Home Office.

The project was part of a wider research programme managed by the Institute for Government’s (IfG) which looked at improving IT delivery in Government.

Managing User Generated Content - Your Organisation in Their Hands

07 DEC 2010 | Posted in communities of practice, online communities, social CRM, social media, User Generated Content, website | Author Alex McLachlan |

1 Comment

User generated content (UGC) is widely used by organisations to create deeper engagement with customers and other stakeholders, and to reduce content-production and marketing costs. There are also risks associated with UGC of brand damage and legal problems arising from misuse. To mitigate against these pitfalls you should plan carefully for its introduction by:

Why Wikipedia is wrong about Agile

26 NOV 2010 | Posted in agile project management, agile theory, Wikipedia

Looking at the Wikipedia entry for "agile project management", we were reminded that there are many myths and misinformed views surrounding this very adaptable method of delivering projects. Certainly it started us thinking about how we could update and better inform the article, but before we took that step we thought we'd try exploring and explaining some of our reasoning in a post of our own: just to provide balance to some of the alternative views of Agile that are out there.

The A - Z of Agile: Contents List

09 OCT 2010 | Posted in agile a-z, agile project management | Author Alex McLachlan

Our Agile Matters Blog recently ran a series of posts for the A - Z of Agile.

The Contents List for the series is:

White Paper: The Death and Rebirth of CRM

26 MAR 2010 | Posted in CRM, finance system, strategic IT | Author Alex McLachlan

Introduction

Despite years of investment, CRM, Donor and Membership systems have failed organisations and individuals. The days of mass communication to homogenised groups is drawing to a close. This paper reviews the root causes of the failures and looks to the opportunities that are now available for organisations to communicate more effectively and support improved engagement with members, donors and other important stakeholders.