Scrum 911! Using Scrum to Overhaul a Support Organization

Abstract

The Support 2.0 Team at our IT organization has recently completed Phase 1 of the Support 2.0 project. Phase 1 was a four month endeavor with a primary focus of collecting data to understand why support was so costly and identify the root cause for each support request. The team strongly believed that this initial phase would be critical to making significant impacts to the quality and supportability of applications. This experience report describes the challenge for the Support 2.0 Team and shares the successful adoption of agile practices in redefining the support organization. In the spirit of the agile transition to software development one year prior, our IT organization decided to rethink the approach to application support. By embracing agile principles and utilizing agile concepts, such as a cross-functional team, a team collaboration approach with frequent reviews to inspect and adapt as needed, etc, the business was able to reap immediate benefits. It was a challenging journey for the team, where the mix of onshore/offshore support engineers and an integrated client / vendor relationship within an agile team and focused framework helped to transform the support organization from an operational cost center to a value added thought partner. This resulted in a significantly improved culture and effectiveness of the support organization. This unique organization of an agile, cross-functional and team-based approach to handle support requests improved the customer experience, reduced support costs, and ultimately provided greater opportunity for the business to fund new development efforts.