The City of Unley in South Australia has reformed its IT department, moving the focus to driving business transformation and organisational efficiency.
Aptly titled Business Systems and Solutions, functions of the new IT department include application and systems support, GIS, business intelligence, cloud architecture, digital services, unified communications, and program and project management.
With a burgeoning wish list of more than 80 business transformation initiatives, the team made the decision to implement an Agile project management methodology.
Rather than focus on long-term project plans, Agile breaks down work into two-week ‘sprints’ with evaluation and review between iterations.
A certified ‘Scrum Master’ (or project lead) was appointed, and visual ‘Kanban’ boards are used to track progress, with daily team and stakeholder ‘stand-ups’ undertaken to ensure constant engagement in decision-making and direction.
In nine months, the team has already delivered an online customer service portal, a Council-wide document management system and a mobile computing strategy using Agile.
Underway for delivery in early 2018 are a unified communications system and contact centre, a hybrid cloud data centre and a Windows 10 desktop refresh.
City of Unley Manager Business Systems and Solutions, James Roberts said Agile has allowed the team to engage strongly with customers and deliver immediate and visible transformation to the organisation in a short period of time.
“Agile is a fast and highly efficient way to facilitate change and transform business processes while ensuring organisation wide buy-in.
“We’re now looking towards using Agile to work with local businesses and our community to shape online services and smart cities initiatives through user stories.”
