IndigoBlue has provided the Guardian with a senior Programme Manager and a lead Business Analyst specialising in Agile Management techniques, to help manage the site development, incremental roll out and overall project delivery. Tom Turcan, General Manager of Guardian Unlimited, said, “Guardian Unlimited is already the UK’s most popular newspaper website. We are now in the process of upgrading our technical environment to offer an even better experience for our users and we needed the support of an experienced and committed external partner to help us deliver our vision in a controlled manner.”

IndigoBlue was initially engaged by the Guardian to provide an audit of the planning, management and reporting of the first phase of the project and was subsequently asked to provide programme management services across the many elements of the transformation programme. Agile techniques have given us greater flexibility than large programmes traditionally allow,” commented Turcan. “demonstrating steady delivery against business objectives.”

Nigel Kneill, Programme Manager, IndigoBlue, commented, “This has been an exciting and challenging project, and we have shown that following an Agile approach delivers significant advantages in terms of early return on investment, increased quality and improved fitness for purpose. The mixed team using IndigoBlue, the Guardian and ThoughtWorks (providing the development and delivery assurance team) works very well, allowing each partner’s industry leading skill set to be utilised in the optimum way.”

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IndigoBlue has been assisting International Financial Data Services (IFDS) in improving its IT delivery via the use of Agile methods. IFDS is the UK's leading supplier of investor-recordkeeping services and systems to the UK domestic and to the European “offshore” market. Information technology is a key part of its offering and the ability to configure its solutions quickly and to the highest quality for its customers is paramount. IFDS successfully piloted the use of Agile techniques to improve the speed of delivery, fitness for purpose and quality of deliverable. IndigoBlue has assisted with capturing the best practice from these initial pilots, consolidating this and then assisting with the scale up of Agile across the entire organisation. This has included the use of Agile in an outsourced environment via the IFDS office in Bangkok.

The Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) has been selected alongside UNICEF UK and Comic Relief as a finalist in the Charitable Organisation category of the Information Age Effective IT Awards™. The Awards celebrate IT strategies that demonstrate how technology provides indisputable business value. The 2006 winners represent a broad range of industries and organisations of all sizes, from major UK corporates and government departments, to smaller owner-managed companies.

"This is a major achievement for the AAT. It reflects the success achieved in the implementation of the IT strategy and the tremendous effort of the AAT team", commented Rob Smith, Chief Executive of IndigoBlue and Agile CIO for the AAT.

The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), one of the oldest Royal Societies whose mission is "to create a more principled and prosperous society", has commissioned IndigoBlue to assist with defining and implementing its Information Strategy. Stephen King, Chief Operating Officer at the RSA, explained, “The RSA has been undergoing a series of major changes over the last year and we will continue to evolve to engage our Fellows and encourage pro-social change to meet our mission. Information technology and services are a vital part of this and we look forward to working with IndigoBlue to ensure we have the best possible systems to support our endeavours.” IndigoBlue will assist the RSA in aligning the society’s objectives with its information needs and work with the RSA over the longer term to ensure that these needs are met in a cost-effective manner.

Following a successful review of the first phase of a major development project (see below), IndigoBlue has been engaged to provide a number of key staff to de-risk the second phase of the project. Key roles include Programme Manager and Lead BA.

After the first phase of a major improvement project, Guardian Unlimited asked IndigoBlue to review their project management and software development processes and make recommendations for the future. "We invited them in because they clearly had a deep insight into the issues of scaling Agile development projects," said Nik Silver, Head of Software Development at Guardian Unlimited. "We were very impressed with the speed and quality of the work. They identified a number of issues that would have caused us significant problems, and suggested useful steps which we can now take to help with the next phases of the project."

IndigoBlue has undertaken an IT interoperability review for the Institute of Physics Group to investigate the opportunities, risks and constraints associated with further collaboration between Group members: the Institute of Physics (IOP), the Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP) and the Institute of Physics Enterprise (IOPE). The IOP Group is devoted to increasing the understanding and application of physics. It has an extensive worldwide membership, over 50 published scientific journals, a range of community web-sites and conference facilities. It is a leading communicator of physics with all audiences from specialists through government to the general public.

The review focussed on key aspects of interoperability within the Group: process alignment, collaboration tools, data integration, hardware and infrastructure. "We chose IndigoBlue because they not only had the required IT expertise, but also had a clear understanding of the business and cultural issues involved." explained Sean Fox, Financial Director of the Group," We were also impressed with their approach, which gave continual feedback and provided ample opportunity for staff, stakeholders and other suppliers to input knowledge and ideas."

Following the successful completion of a number of pilot projects, the Carphone Warehouse(CPW) has extended its engagement of IndigoBlue to support the wider-adoption of their Agile, Rapid Development Methodology.  As a leading retailer in a rapidly changing marketplace it is essential that CPW is able to launch new products in the minimum time and IT is an important enabler of this.  As James Barker, adoption manager, commented, "Time to market is key. Our priority is in delivering business to our customers and our methodology is proven to achieve this."  Having supported the development of the process, IndigoBlue is now working with CPW to further refine the methodology and to provide staff training and mentoring.