QinetiQ
Accelerating Defence Innovation Through Agile Transformation
About QinetiQ
QinetiQ is a global security and defence company, focusing on Test and Evaluation for platforms and systems in land, sea, air and space domains.
Quanta has provided training to QinetiQ for over 20 years in support of a number of business areas, including Agile and Scrum programme overhauls more recently.
Challenges
QinetiQ won a number of new larger, multidiscipline long-term contracts that required them to reconsider their current Waterfall method of delivery. For Gareth Draper, Chief Software Engineer, it was a necessary change.
“To deliver in an ever evolving landscape, at pace, and to meet the changing needs of our customers, we needed to modify the way we worked. While a waterfall methodology works for some of our safety critical projects, it wasn’t suitable for delivering value at pace with fluid requirements, changing timescales and stretched customer budgets.”
Delivering these complex multidiscipline projects meant bringing together greater numbers of separate teams, breaking down internal barriers, increasing team communication and sharing responsibility and ownership of the overall solution rather than parts of the delivery.
Solution
To overcome these challenges, Quanta worked with QinetiQ to provide a comprehensive series of Agile courses, beginning with Raise the Terror – a Scrum business simulation in which delegates must apply Agile principles to salvage a sunken vessel before ice sets in. Designed for participants with little to no knowledge of Scrum, the simulation focuses on showing
the system’s value in breaking down tasks and structuring communication, making it applicable for any discipline. Next, the delegates completed the ScrumMaster® and Product Owner®
courses, to cement the methodology and develop how to communicate with internal and external stakeholders. Finally, QinetiQ had a contextualization session where their Agile Trainer discussed how to tweak the methodology to their specific delivery challenges.
Outcome
Gareth was very impressed by this programme.
“The concept was simple but effective, the implementation was brilliant, the trainers were first class, and the contextualization was very helpful in bringing the theory to life in our environment. The courses were practical and engaging, and we have since rolled them out to hundreds of our staff.”
Those QinetiQ employees gave Quanta scores of 9.40 out of 10 for tutoring quality.
Following the completion of the course schedule, Gareth reported that the teams felt more developed professionally, and appreciated the adoption of a more modern way of working. The quality of cross team communication also increased.
Gareth reports the effects were felt externally too:
“Our Agile transformation meant that we were able to bid for and win more complex tenders, and enabled us to respond more satisfactorily to customer queries.“
I enjoyed the course. It was well presented and the trainer was engaging and supportive. It was great to receive a hard copy course book ahead of the course too.- Sophie Wales, Department for Education
Engaging delivery and the tutor brought the course to life by using real life examples.- Adam Bellew, Department for Education
The course was extremely well delivered and organised. The Trainer was very knowledgeable. We were prepared for the exam and put at ease prior to the start. I recommend Quanta…- Jaci Blackmore, HMRC Newcastle
Honestly one of the best training days I've ever attended. Meaningful, impactful and interesting training. I Really enjoyed it!- Jamie Wright, Ofgem
What a great, friendly and approachable company to receive training from! Good course delivery, content and very well paced.- Steve Pringle, National savings & Investments
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