Every organisation works differently, but one thing is always true: change is hard. One way to alleviate the pain of change, even turn it to a positive opportunity, is to get some training and guidance. That’s exactly what happened when Software Education and CSG International teamed up to help CSG International go Agile. We interviewed Kris Anderson, Engineering Manager, Singleview Research and Development to ask about their ‘Agile’ journey. We hope this case study can be useful to others thinking of making the change.
Our thanks to everyone at CSG International, it’s been great working with you.
SoftEd: What does CSG International do?
Kris: CSG International is a provider of business support solutions, primarily to telecommunications and cable providers. Our R&D group in Brisbane is responsible for our Singleview product – a highly flexible billing and customer care solution.
SoftEd: How did I.T. use to happen at CSG International (pre-Agile)?
Kris: Historically we’ve used a modified waterfall process to develop Singleview, defining a fixed scope for major releases based on requirements from a variety of stakeholders.
Internally, we’ve traditionally separated our internal functions out into distinct development, testing and technical writing groups, each with their own scheduling and deliverables.
SoftEd: What drove CSG International to look at Agile methodologies? What was the problem you were facing? For example, were you doing something well but wanted to improve or did you have an area that wasn’t working as it should have been?
Kris: From a customer point of view, we’ve always been very strong with delivering high-quality features on time. However, as we’ve scaled up, we’ve seen the timeframes for major releases grow. We wanted to adapt to deliver the highest priority features in a shorter timeframe, without compromising our ability to hit schedule and quality targets.
SoftEd: How did you find out about Software Education?
Kris: We’ve had a long relationship with Software Education as a training provider. Over the years, most if not all of our leaders have found the Small Team Leadership course to be tremendously valuable.
SoftEd: What solution did Software Education suggest for CSG International?
Kris: Software Education has a great reputation for Agile training. We had some initial contact with Sharon Robson for a primer on Agile testing, and that led to us running an in-house course on Agile testing with all of our testing specialists. The feedback on the course was great; our testers were more able to visualise how they might work under Agile.
SoftEd: What has been the follow-up since the training? Has there been additional support? Have there been visible changes in the organisation?
Kris: We’ve had a number of other staff, both new testing hires and existing development staff, participate in Agile testing courses, and the feedback continues to be very positive. As our teams' transition to Agile, our testers have been able to put their training into practice. We found the training wasn’t just about what to do, it was about why you do it and why it is important to you. Our teams evolve their processes over time, and this kind of first-principles training really helps to keep us on track.
SoftEd: Which are some of the Agile techniques and practices that you feel have made the biggest difference? What was their value to CSG International?
Kris: There are several Agile techniques or practices that have made a big difference to us:
- Co-location of cross-functional teams. We did this very early in our transition, well before organising work into team backlogs. We’ve seen communication between developers, testers and writers improve tremendously.
- Continuous build and testing. For our older products, we’ve been evolving towards this slowly but surely; with Agile, this became a priority. Our teams realised benefits from this immediately; regressions are quickly caught and repaired, and we waste less time chasing problems down.
- Self-organising teams. We’ve been very process-driven in the past; our collective experience was captured in-process documents, to ensure we avoid traps and delivered a quality product. More and more we are delegating responsibility to teams, giving them scope to find the most effective way to deliver, tune and try things when they see the potential for improvements.
SoftEd: Are there any Agile techniques that didn’t work for you? If so, why do you think that was?
Kris: We’ve had mixed success with pair programming. One of our pilot teams used pairing extensively at the outset, with coaching from staff experienced in pair programming. Over time the team has grown to recognise the situations where pairing works for them. There’s no mandate to pair or to not pair; if a team finds it useful, they’re welcome to use it.
SoftEd: Was there any internal resistance to change? How did CSG International try to ensure employee buy-in?
Kris: I think people have been quite receptive to the idea of the big change to Agile. It’s changing some of the small things that make people nervous – when you’ve done something a certain way for a long time, it’s natural to have some resistance to a new way. We’ve moved our transition along at a controlled, deliberate pace, with the gradual adoption of a number of Agile techniques across teams. In general, people who might have been nervous about anyone small change have come to understand the real impacts of that change, both the costs and benefits. I think over time people see that collectively these changes have had a positive net effect.
The transition is driven by a team of key staff and management who have encouraged open communication and involvement with all staff in a bunch of different ways – workshops, emails, surveys, face-to-face updates in meetings.
SoftEd: What effect has this team’s training had on the rest of the CSG International organisation?
Kris: The day-to-day life of a tester is changing pretty significantly for us; we’re bringing testing forward and integrating it tightly with our development activities. In the teams that have transitioned, our testing specialists have used their prior knowledge and their Agile testing training to help guide their teams in testing practices.
SoftEd: What advice would CSG International give to other organisations thinking of moving to Agile?
Kris: We’ve done three specific things that have been key to our transition so far:
- Get some external talent. It is useful to prime staff with training and reading, but someone who has worked in a few different organisations and seen Agile applied successfully (and unsuccessfully!) can make a big difference. We were lucky enough to retain the services of an experienced Agile practitioner who had previously worked for CSG. He came to us with a good understanding of our existing processes, and he could foresee the difficult parts of the transition.
- Form a transition team. We have a transition team composed of members from a variety of disciplines and at various levels across the R&D organisation, with our VP acting as Product Owner. The team members are on the ground building software and working with the group at large; they know what works and what can be improved; they can see where the difficulties will be and where the biggest opportunities are.
- Take it slowly. We ran a number of trial projects, and we learned valuable lessons from each one. We are transitioning across our organisation in stages, going through multiple iterations with some of the simpler groups, learning lessons and tuning our plans, before moving on to the next group.
SoftEd: What final thoughts or feelings do you have about Agile?
Kris: I’m a convert! I think the thing that really sells me on Agile is the way it encourages teams to take responsibility of their own destiny. Teams understand the business need for features; they estimate their own work and feel ownership for the delivery commitment. They take ownership of how we do things and tune processes to meet their needs. Feedback from the majority of the staff is really positive; they feel more engaged with their team and with people in other disciplines. They can see how their work contributes to the whole, and teams bond in a way we haven’t seen before. No matter what sort of programme or project I’m involved in from now on, I’ll be looking to make sure teams work this way.
About CSG International
CSG International (NASDAQ: CSGS) is a market-leading business support solutions and services company serving the majority of the top 100 global communications service providers, including leaders in fixed, mobile and next-generation networks such as AT&T, Comcast, DISH Network, France Telecom, MasterCard, Orange, T-Mobile, Telefonica, Time Warner Cable, Vodafone, Vivo and Verizon. With over 25 years of experience and expertise in voice, video, data and content services, CSG International offers a broad portfolio of licensed and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based products and solutions that help clients compete more effectively, improve business operations and deliver a more impactful customer experience across a variety of touchpoints.