In the second in our series of blogs setting out how we work with our clients, we discuss our approach to Delivery. You can read about our approach to Architecture here.

At Scott Logic, we deliver complex, business-critical solutions for some of the world’s largest institutions, across a range of industries and domains. Our reputation for delivery excellence comes not just from delivering maximum value, on time and on budget, but from an approach deeply rooted in our values and in our desire to work in genuine partnership with our clients.

Just as every project is unique, we recognise that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to delivery. Our delivery managers are experienced in quickly assessing the context and finding the right combination of methodology, tools and communication styles that work for the project and for your organisation.

Below we set out our guiding principles to ensure positive outcomes for delivery.

1) Setting up for success

Whilst it can be tempting to jump straight into the work, we take the time up front to establish the lay of the land, exploring with you:

• Who are our stakeholders and what are their interests in the project? We aim to meet as many people as possible during the first week, to build relationships, listen to your challenges and aspirations, and understand how we can best work together.

• What are we here to do and why? It may sound like a simple question, but ensuring we have a common vision and understanding of the purpose and scope of work is vitally important to ensure we set out on the right foot.

• What is the context we’re working in? Are there existing products and services we need to interface with, established processes and practices we should follow, other teams working in the same space? Understanding the context helps to identify risks and dependencies early, guiding our approach to planning.

Getting the fundamentals right ensures early alignment of goals and objectives, provides timely visibility of obstacles to success, and sets the foundations for a positive partnership from the outset.

2) Collaborative leadership, collective responsibility

We place an emphasis on collaboration, transparency and respect, adopting a one-team mentality to tackle challenges together.

We make it a priority to discuss early on how we are going to work together. Rather than impose rigid processes, we start by finding out how you prefer to work and introduce recommended best practice gradually as the opportunity and need arise.

We’re not afraid to challenge where we feel our wealth of knowledge and experience could help you to deliver better outcomes, faster; however, we prefer to adopt a coaching style as we believe in creating a legacy that will equip you for a future beyond the scope of our engagement.

Our delivery managers focus on creating an environment of mutual trust and psychological safety, instilling a culture of feedback and continuous improvement so that our teams fulfil their maximum potential. In our experience, the best way to build high performing teams is to:

• share the project vision and the value of the work, i.e. how it contributes to your business goals and user needs;

• establish clear roles and responsibilities, providing open lines of communication and setting expectations around ownership;

• create a team charter to gain collective buy-in to shared values and ways of working;

• make work visible through collaborative tooling and regular demos/showcases;

• provide channels for regular feedback on team and individual performance.

3) Agile by default, pragmatic by nature

We favour an agile approach to our engagements, adopting iterative planning, development and review cycles to provide transparency and rapid feedback on progress.

It is our experience that agile methodologies foster better collaboration, bringing cross-functional team members together in close partnership with our clients to prioritise the flow of value. This is especially true where requirements are not fully known and the path to reaching the end goal is still unclear. Taking an exploratory, “inspect and adapt” approach allows for early course correction and the ability to respond to change, steering the project towards the desired business outcomes.

We recognise that you also need a plan! We are adept at reconciling agile approaches with planning and budgeting cycles using approaches such as rolling wave or quarterly planning to cater for different planning horizons, whether in feature- or project-driven environments.

Where necessary, we take a pragmatic approach to scaling agile teams, preferring light-touch coordination and dependency management over heavily process-driven frameworks.

4) A healthy attitude to risk

We know our clients don’t like surprises – at least not of the negative variety! We involve the whole team in identifying risks, assumptions, issues and dependencies (RAID items) and we review these regularly with you to ensure they are well understood and carefully managed. We record key decisions so that we have a clear record of how and why we arrived at a given conclusion and its expected impact.

We use techniques like project pre-mortems and risk workshops to get everyone thinking about what could go wrong and ways to avoid or mitigate those challenges. These exercises can also identify opportunities that add value for the business or end user.

We intentionally plan activities such as spikes (small investigations or experiments) to validate assumptions, reduce the likelihood or impact of risks, and – where possible – decouple dependencies.

5) Effective monitoring and control

Our delivery approach is designed to provide assurance to our clients that projects are well-managed and on track to deliver the agreed outcomes on time and on budget. We strive to create an environment of transparency and trust so that, should things not go to plan, we can have open and honest conversations with you, leading to a mutually agreed plan of action.

To ensure good project oversight, we work with you to establish and maintain:

• A shared understanding of the scope of the work, including mechanisms for prioritising work and adapting to change, a plan to deliver the agreed outcomes, and our progress against that plan.

• A firm grasp of the commercial position, setting and maintaining agreed budget and resource plans, tracking time and expense costs, using financial forecasting and risk techniques to anticipate and manage potential cost or schedule overruns, and monitoring progress against other contractual commitments.

• A tailored approach to reporting and governance, based on shared measures of success, such that collectively we can reach decisions quickly based on sufficient and timely provision of information.

Taken together, our guiding principles for delivery excellence help us to to build ‘trusted partner’ relationships at all levels, to anticipate and manage the inevitable problems and challenges that face all business and IT transformation projects, and ultimately to assure mutually successful outcomes.

Our clients value our combination of pragmatism and lived experience, our one-team mindset and our authenticity as delivery partners. We’re incredibly proud of our teams and the brilliant results they achieve for our clients!

How can we help you?

For more on how our approach to delivery can help your organisation minimise risk and maximise value, visit our Product & Delivery Management page.