Scaling Agile Product Development across WA Police with SAFe®

Digital transformation to support frontline policing activities with modern ways of working.

The Situation

ZXM was engaged by the CIO of the W.A. Police Force to assist its agile journey and improve its product management capability in a way that would embrace its constraints with business-as-usual support of frontline policing activities.

WA Police had had some experience with agile, and wanted to scale this capability across the organisation to improve its approach to portfolio, program and team-level delivery of digital tool in order to:

Improve business alignment and collaboration by involving key groups, such as Business Owners in the decision-making process of prioritisation of the value delivered through IT.
Improve the way the whole of IT operates – from strategic and inviting innovative thinking through to its tactics and operations so that it becomes learner and more responsive to changes in technology, changes in business need, and changes in its regulatory domain.

The Solution

W.A. Police needed to rapidly scale in an environment of significant constraint and risk in a way that wouldn’t impact business-as-usual while rapidly building scaled agile capability.

Over a period of 9 months, ZXM worked closely with the Agile transition team and leadership to support W.A. Police on its agile journey through:

Raising awareness and a desire for change

Using Prosci® ADKAR® as part of the agile journey to change behaviour

Raising awareness of the benefits of agile practice through executive overviews at the commencement of the engagement

Planning and developing how to deploy SAFe®

Moving to an agile product development framework

Planning and developing an Agile Framework that aligns with its Target Operating Model with a blend of Run and Change the Business across product/technology Agile Release Trains (ARTs)

Iterating SAFe® to meet emerging needs

Using our expertise to select the parts of SAFe® needed for success

Iterating how it delivered on strategic business needs in an Agile approach, as a means to pilot and test the resulting Agile Framework across its portfolio

Coaching and enabling leadership

Mentoring managers to be agile leaders

Coaching and enabling its leadership to be change agents to transform ICT and business workforce, and communicate and measure the effect of the organisation change.

The Results

In a very short period of time, ZXM helped W.A. Police launch and transition to its new agile product management framework based on SAFe® and align executive strategic planning and prioritisation activities to the tactical elements of delivery.

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