by James Hayes & Shannon Russell This is a story of agile adoption outside of the traditional environment of agile teams. The eDash program faced a number of challenges, including the need to make sure that principals and teachers in remote communities had a voice in the priorities of the project. Similarly, it was vital to make sure that the solution developed would be enthusiastically adopted by educators across the Northern Territory. This was an organisation new to agile and under pressure to deliver from within and externally. Despite these and many other hurdles the NT Education department, partnering with Aginic, have delivered a product that has generated excitement amongst the NT teaching community and has already begun bringing about small positive improvements to education across the territory. We will be sharing our lessons learned and our success stories in bringing about a shift in mindset that allowed NT Education to embrace a new way of working and achieve such a fantastic outcome for teachers and principals.

1. Agile in Education
Empowering teachers and principals in the
Northern Territory

2. James Hayes Shannon Russell

3. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6449847062321299456
About eDash

4. Challenges

5. ContextAverage ICSEA
1000 736
NATIONAL SCORE NT SCORE

6. Number of all students enrolled in government schools, 2017
791,763
30,515
NSW VIC QLD SA WA TAS ACTNT
1.2%
of all national
students live
in NT
606,475
547,137
173,506
276,914
56,669 41,886
Inform ation sourced from
National Report of Schooling at www.acara.edu.au

7. Schools and students in remote areas
44%
of our students
are enrolled at
these schools
71%
of NT Schools
are located in
remote and
very remote
areas

8. High number of small schoolsNumber of government schools, 2017
2,151
1,525
1,234
513
784
192 153 87
NSW VIC QLD SA WA TAS ACTNT
68of these schools
have fewer than
100 students
153
government
schools in NT
Inform ation sourced from
National Report of Schooling at www.acara.edu.au

9. The result
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6458205033094840320

10. Impact
Congratulations Education NT. This is an initiative I only dreamed of when I stated at
Wulagi 7 years ago…
… my assistant principal has not stopped ohing and ahing and using and sharing and
delighting in the tool….and it’s not even been up 24 hours……
The feedback is the best feedback I have ever seen after launching a new system!

11. 1. Product Delivery & Transformation
2. Importance of great Product Ownership
3. Creating effective feedback loops

12. 1 Product Delivery
& Transformation

13. Our approach

14. Incremental delivery
Traditional
• Serialised development process driven
by fixed requirements
• Little to no value realised until end of
the process (usable product available at
the end of the project)
Agile
• Continuous incremental delivery
process with small regular value drops
• Continuously adapt to changing
customer requirements
• Potentially greater value is realised by
the customer, and earlier

15. Finance Ops CRM HR
Data
acquisition
Source ETL
Data Lake
One row per..
Business
Intelligence
..Employee
..Leave record
.. Pay line
.. Customer
.. Relationship
.. Interaction
.. Account
.. Transaction
.. Balance per
day
.. Holding
.. Fund
.. GL per day
Eg. Revenue
dashboard
Eg. Account
profile
Eg. Custom er
lifetim e value
Eg. Leave
dashboard
1. 2. 3. 4.

16. Trimming the tail
Image Credit: H.Kniberg

17. Agile and the NT Department of Education

18. Agile transformation starts with
great product delivery

19. 2 Importance of great
Product Ownership

20. Listening to feedback
Part of the team
Discipline and Responsibility
Product Owner empowering the team

21. Product Owner
Guiding the team to value
• “CEO” of the product – we told the CE of
Education this!
• Empowered to make decisions for the team and
keeping this transparent
• Represents the interests of Teachers and
Principals
• Represents the product to Teachers and
Principals
• Letting Principals and Teachers prioritise

22. Products are not just for Christmas
• Craft the strategy for the service or product
• Focus on health not just features
• Strategies for sustained delivery of value
• Value the asset and its customers
• Retirement is part of the journey

23. The Product Owner role is critical for
great delivery teams

24. 3 Creating effective
feedback loops

25. Processes for Engagement
• Identify a representative group of end users
• Keep the group engaged:
o Structured meetings (eg. Showcase)
o Listen and respond to feedback
o Be transparent with decision making
o Initiate pilots / early user testing
• Offer many modes of communication:
o Mixed mode meetings
o Email
o SharePoint Forums
o One-on-one interactions
o Surveys

26. Designing Valuable Outcomes
Project Discovery
Make sure the team has a clear
understanding of the vision for product
and form the backlog accordingly.
Design Thinking
Constantly challenging assumptions and
refining the design:
• Personas
• Empathy mapping
• Journey mapping
• User Testing and Research
“Do less research more often”
J. Goethelf

27. Incremental Delivery

28. Feedback should be on your
audience’s terms

29. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6460027891773206528
Feedback fromour Principals

30. Key messages

31. ● Agile Transformation starts with great product delivery
● The Product Owner role is critical for great delivery teams
● Feedback needs to be on your audience’s terms

32. Thanks!
Shannon Russell
Product Owner – eDash
0447 803 203
shannon.russell@nt.gov.au
James Hayes
Director – AginicDS
0423 687 344
james@aginicds.com

33. Informing decisions for our students