Waterfall and Agile Engagement experience can be very lengthy involving detailed RFP containing full itinerary of the high-level requirements. The problem with this is the requirements within the RFP are very high level, which can lead to high possibility critical elements missed from the scope. In later stages this can result in a scope that is missing those fine details, leading to the engagement terms being miss interpreted.
The outcome is usually unclear or not fit for purpose deliverables, resulting in scope creeps with the need for change requests more time and cost.
With Waterfall the build consists of 3-4 iterations to final build with each iteration being 2-3 months long before SMEs engagement is possible.
With Agile delivery the build is different, this method requires much shorter iterations of two-weeks long called sprints to deliver the agreed User Stories. This approach benefits that SMEs are continuously engaged and enriched as they regularly accept the User Stories and solution. The User Stories backlogs are delivered with the aim to achieve MVP (Minimum Viable Product) generally within 10 to 12 sprints. This provides huge benefits resulting in a more engaging, less waste, improved quality, continuous leverage, enriched culture and better experience delivery.
Both Waterfall and Agile variants offered small gains with waste everywhere, we were not happy with this and set about to develop our own called SPEED, we wanted to solve the problem throughout and not just for the delivery phase.
To solve this we developed our delivery method from the ground up with tooling and pre-built templates that are fully aligned with the requirements and scoping which formalise the engagement for delivery. This results in a smoother transition into delivery and eliminates different interpretations, ultimately speeding up the process.
The pre-sale process stages with SPEED can be seen below. During these stages no commercials or commitments are required until such a stage the detailed scope of work is agreed formalisedthrough the template Key Decisions and Detailed Questionnaires. We will respond to your RFP the same, however with our method further details are required as described in the Key Decisions and Detailed Questionnaires in order to fine tune functionality. This has the benefit of being able to better align to your RFP which fundamentally takes place prior to scope agreed and commercials finalised. The engineering is in the global solution set as standard best practice aligned with the Key Decisions and Detailed Questionnaires, this enables us to tailor your solution to your specific requirements.
With the other variations of Waterfall or Agile on offer, these generally take place in Workshops often resulting in 2-3 months of additional timeline cost before your first build.
Our first build is delivered by tailoring the pre-built Global Solution Set, which has best practice and standards built-in aiming to deliver within 2 weeks, once the Oracle SaaS environment has been provisioned. This results in the first build representing a much closer fit to the envisaged end product.
With our SPEED method for ERP Applications delivery each build iteration is one month long with expected three iterations to deliver the final build. We believe shortening the iterations to a much shorter timeline which we can with SPEED, brings the methodology much closer to the Agile method resulting in similar benefits with the impact of a more engaging, less waste, improved quality, continuous leverage, enriched culture and better experience delivery.
We very much hope to hear from you and discuss how we can help achieve your transformation goals by leveraging our SPEED methods and artefacts of delivering the Oracle Cloud Products.