Building Agile Capability at Scale for ABS 2021 Census

ZXM’s approach was to consider the risks in agile adoption with the Census Executive for the 2021 Census. The cultural change and management support were identified as key risks, and so ZXM worked with the executive and the Directors to practice Scrum to understand and experience agile for themselves so that they would be in the best position to support and promote agile adoption in their own teams.

We helped them visualise their backlog of work and prioritise based on value. ZXM developed an implementation roadmap and assessed baseline agile capability and maturity. ZXM coaches then helped form and roll out agile teams across the Census program.

Over a period of 12 months working with the 2021 Census program for a year into its 5-year program., ZXM helped them to implement:

• Coached the PMO and Product Management on effective mechanisms for visual management across the 12 workstreams, including using smaller batch sizes to be more transparent on day-to-day outcomes and dependencies that could impact other areas of the program.
• Program-wide prioritisation for work across the program.
• Improved communication, collaboration and transparency between its workstream leads through the use of Kanban and stand-ups on a weekly cycle.
• Improved the visibility of dependencies and risk across key areas in the program through roadmapping
• Established 20 new teams and trained team leads to take on the role of Product Owner.
• Delivered training across the country in other program areas in the ABS, such as Geospatial Data, to work in agile ways to enhance their interaction with the 2021 Census program.