What we did: Equinox IT created a cost model for a central government agency to agree upon funding and a delivery plan for a digital programme of work. Activities included determining the scope of the work; researching relevant statistical cost modelling options; building, calibrating and presenting a Monte Carlo simulation demonstrating the expected total delivery cost of the programme.
Deliverables: Excel-based Monte Carlo simulation with built in variables, probability distributions, market statistics and documentation.
What we did: Equinox IT assessed the feasibility of implementing an electronic marketplace for the sector on behalf of a central government agency.
Deliverables: Assessment reports and targeted advice.
Consultant: Paul Ramsay
What we did: The client requested an independent IT governance and management review, which included the client's own internal corporate systems and those used to provide services externally to the wider sector.
Deliverables: Review reports and presentations.
Consultant: Paul Ramsay
What we did: Equinox IT provided independent quality assurance services for a central government agency undertaking a project to replace their core business system.
Deliverables: Regular review reports and targeted advice.
Consultant: Paul Ramsay
What we did: An education sector organisation was undertaking a significant business transformation programme to help provide an enhanced learning and student experience. Equinox IT provided a two-person team to deliver independent quality assurance services for the transformation programme.
Deliverables: Regular review reports and targeted advice.
Consultant: Paul Ramsay
What we did: Independent quality assurance services for a central government core system replacement project.
Deliverables: A series of IQA reports over the life of the project.
Consultant: Carl Weller
What we did: Provision of independent quality assurance services across a major business change and systems replacement project that would impact every area of the client’s business.
Deliverables: A series of IQA reports over the life of the project.
Consultant: Carl Weller
What we did: Independent quality assurance services for an education sector core system replacement project. The service included reviewing key project management and technical artefacts required for programme initiation (PID, Test Strategy, Integration Strategy, Agile process). There was also ongoing reviews of status reports and core programme documentation.
Deliverables: Review findings and recommendations.
Consultant: Carl Weller
What we did: Provision of independent quality assurance of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider on behalf of a central government agency. Activities included reviewing the IaaS provider's governance, service management, and supply chain management practices.
Deliverables: Review report.
Consultant: Paul Ramsay
What we did: Equinox IT provided programme management services for a central government agency who was replacing the system used to manage and administer their core business process.
Deliverables: Advice and guidance on the oversight and management of the programme.
Consultant: Paul Ramsay
What we did: Programme management services to lead a multi-year programme to replace core enterprise systems (inspection systems, point of sale, FMIS, customer portal and CRM). A mix of bespoke software on Azure PaaS and specific SaaS offerings, and included an enterprise services approach to master data management. This assignment is still in progress.
Deliverables: Enterprise architecture document, high level service-based architecture design, programme budgets, work programme, and new inspection system (Android platform, developed using Ionic 3, Angular 4, C#, Azure PaaS).
Consultant: Carl Weller
What we did: Provision of project management services for a central government agency undertaking a project to replace a core business system. Equinox IT managed the construction phase of this work.
Deliverables: Contracts, statement of work, board papers, project management plan, and regular project reports.
Consultant: Paul Ramsay
What we did: Provision of project management services to develop and implement a new core business management system. Activities included re-planning final stage of project, writing updated business plan, securing funding, developing and implementing an approach to stabilise the application and refresh the technology base, setting up the project environment, and introducing the Kanban approach.
Deliverables: Project plan, updated business case project funding, refreshed technology base, and Kanban approach.
Consultant: Carl Weller
What we did: Project management services to migrate core business systems from a managed vendor datacentre into an Azure platform. This involved significant effort to decouple tightly coupled systems and data flows and migrate with low impact on the business.
Deliverables: Migrated systems, updated support processes and documentation, and decommissioned legacy environment.
Consultant: Carl Weller
What we did: Technical project management services for a business system enhancement project. The system needed to be enhanced to support mandated industry requirements.
Deliverables: Business system enhancements.
Consultant: Carl Weller
What we did: Equinox IT provided a technical project manager to lead a team of internal client staff and four partnered vendor organisations to develop, test and implement a customer facing assessment system on Android tablets. The tablet application is now used nationwide (~250,000 assessments per annum) and has won several design awards.
Deliverables: Proof of concept for integrated tablet technology, mobile tablet application, web-based administration portal (mid-tier infrastructure, hosted in AWS), application documentation and training.
Consultant: Carl Weller
What we did: Leading the analysis effort for a project to deliver a tablet application to replace a previously manual process. Activities included leading the analysis function, requirements management, QA of requirements documentation, stakeholder management, and delivery team liaison.
Deliverables: Analysis leadership and delivery.
Consultant: Kirsten Eriksen
What we did: Providing business analysis services for an asset management application project for a central government agency. Activities included business process documentation, workshop facilitation, system function analysis, implementation decision making support, and application training documentation.
Deliverables: Business process documentation, requirements documentation, and training documentation.
Consultant: Kirsten Eriksen
What we did: Business analysis services for a central government agency implementing asset management application functionality. Activities included analysis and documentation of processes, facilitating workshops, analysis of system functionality, implementation support, and production of training material.
Deliverables: Process, requirements and training documentation.
Consultant: Fiona Blunsdon
What we did: Business analysis services for a central government agency with activities including: analysis and documentation of processes, facilitating workshops, requirements elicitation and documentation, analysis of system functions, supporting business implementation decisions, and documenting user training material.
Deliverables: Process, requirements and training documentation.
Consultant: Fiona Blunsdon
What we did: Expert business analysis advice as part of a programme to help a business analysis team improve their requirements activities. Quality review of team's approaches and deliverables.
Deliverables: Business analysis advice, quality reviews and recommendations.
Consultant: John Barris
What we did: Equinox IT helped a utility organisation that had four projects in the business case preparation stage. The role involved working closely with the client’s business representatives and solution architects, and leading gap analysis, business benefits and requirements definition activities for each project.
Deliverables: Risk and incident management analysis report, business case and high-level requirements, training material.
Consultant: Matt Johnston
What we did: Providing business analysis services to estimate the costs and identify the impact of changing existing business processes and applications to align better with the organisation's objectives. Activities included workshop facilitation, analysis and estimation functions, and documentation of user stories and acceptance criteria.
Deliverables: Estimate and impact documentation, user stories with acceptance criteria.
Consultant: Michael Kane
What we did: Developed process documentation for customer processes for a central government agency. Activities included customer focused processes, process maps, requirements gathering and stakeholder interviews, and process automation requirements.
Deliverables: Detailed process documentation and solution requirements for three customer facing business processes.
Consultant: Kirsten Eriksen
What we did: Working with the client to analyse and document the structure and nature of the business, governance and support models, and scope a new programme of work. Working with a single business unit to determine the strategic direction of the wider function of the group, and the technology vision to support integration of disparate programmes within the group. Working with a business group tasked with delivering a new service to determine the approach, IT requirements, business processes, and implementation plan. Eliciting, analysing, and documenting the broader business in order to deliver IT change to meet business needs.
Deliverables: Programme documentation, business unit strategic documentation, operational models, business process models, and requirements documents.
Consultant: Jasmin Wilkins
What we did: Leading the establishment of an EPMO business analysis practice. Created an action plan for the team to develop a community of Practice and deliver consistent, quality analysis outcomes. Communication through meetings and workshop facilitation to gather the input required, and seek buy-in. Working closely with the practice members and stakeholders to deliver a sustainable, consistent, improvement of processes and outputs from the BA Practice.
Deliverables: Business analysis practice with standardised processes and outputs.
Consultant: Jasmin Wilkins
What we did: As part of a major business change programme of work, Equinox IT was responsible for scoping the phases of work, facilitating cross-agency workshops, introducing Scrum project approach, defining functional and non-functional requirements, resolving requirements issues and conflicts, producing a business rules catalogue, and facilitated business design processes.
Deliverables: Implemented Scrum project approach, workshop findings, scope documents, business rules catalogue, and requirements artefacts.
Consultant: John Barris
What we did: Working with the client to identify the business needs and drivers underlying requests to implement an Intranet to share information. Interviewing a range of regional stakeholders to understand their information access requirements, assessing the current environment, and providing a report and recommendation for business change.
Deliverables: Business change recommendations report.
Consultant: Jasmin Wilkins
What we did: Equinox IT led the analysis effort as part of a project to implement a customer facing software application. Activities included leading the analysis function, preparing business process documentation, eliciting and managing requirements, preparing user acceptance documentation and analysing solution implementation options.
Deliverables: Business process documentation, requirements documentation, user acceptance documentation and system configuration.
Consultant: Kirsten Eriksen
What we did: As part of a major business change programme, involving 20 projects and numerous stakeholders, Equinox IT led the team of analysts, providing analysis coaching and upskilling, and undertook Scrum Master responsibilities. Activities included leading the analysis effort, requirements management, QA of requirements and analysis deliverables, requirements workshop facilitation, stakeholder management across client and sector, introducing the Scrum approach, undertaking Scrum Master role, leading business design for sector wide data collection initiative, and coaching business analysts.
Deliverables: Programme wide and high quality requirements deliverables, data collection conceptual design, upskilled business analysis team members, and Scrum delivery approach.
Consultant: Kirsten Eriksen
What we did: As part of a programme to operationalise new legislation, Equinox IT helped policy team members understand the operation impacts of the legislation. Activities included mapping the legislation to operational processes and procedures, creating operational license and permit type maps, facilitating policy and implementation workshops, providing decision advice, coaching client’s internal analysis staff.
Deliverables: Process maps, operational documentation, workshop findings, permit register requirements and options analysis, applicant guidance documentation, and internal analysis review findings.
Consultant: Kirsten Eriksen
What we did: Providing business analysis services to support the integration of a project and portfolio management (PPM) tool with an existing asset management system. Activities included project management process documentation, identifying integration data sets, and analysing relevant PPM tool functionality to support the integration.
Deliverables: Documentation of findings and recommendations.
Consultant: Michael Kane
What we did: Participated in project workshops, conducted interviews and produced project documentation.
Deliverables: Project documentation.
Consultant: Fiona Blunsdon
What we did: Working with the client to review the planned scope and business requirements for the second phase of implementation of Project Server functionality. Interviewing a range of stakeholders to understand their portfolio management needs in the context of the client’s wider environment and processes. Documenting the context and scope of the planned work, and the revised requirements aligned with Project Server capabilities.
Deliverables: Scope and requirements documentation.
Consultant: Jasmin Wilkins
What we did: Providing business analysis services for a central government agency who was investigating better ways to engage with the sector. Activities included modelling conceptual marketplace designs in Sparx EA, identifying stakeholders, eliciting needs, documenting requirements, modelling requirements in Sparx EA, and undertaking options analysis.
Deliverables: Conceptual designs, requirements models and documents, and an options analysis report.
Consultant: Michael Kane
What we did: Providing business analysis services to support the implementation of a major new data collection system. Activities included report specification analysis and documentation in Sparx EA, business rule modelling, next phase support documentation, facilitation of handover from project to BAU.
Deliverables: Project support documentation, reporting specifications, and business rule models.
Consultant: Michael Kane
What we did: Working with the client to specify web services to be integrated into third party applications to allow access to identity and enrolment information. Establishing a method for determining and specifying services, planning and facilitating sector-facing workshops to determine business needs, and documenting the services for third party consumption.
Deliverables: Web services specifications, specification method, and business needs documentation.
Consultant: Jasmin Wilkins
What we did: Equinox IT provided architectural oversight of an IT programme to support the Information Systems Strategic Plan (ISSP). Activities included reviewing and updating elements of the ISSP; taking responsibility for architectural standards, patterns and direction for core and secondary business systems; modelling the current architecture state; creating a risk-based roadmap for technology refresh; advising on structure, roles and candidate selection; reviewing architecture practices; aligning architectural processes with continuous delivery, operations and service management; and creating a technology roadmap for core business systems and infrastructure.
Deliverables: Updated ISSP, current state architecture models, technology roadmaps, updated architecture processes and practices.
What we did: Equinox IT worked with a consortia of local authorities, who had agreed a shared strategic plan, to support and progress shared service and collaboration opportunities that would benefit their combined regions. As part of the programme, Equinox IT was asked to undertake an ICT services assessment and report on findings and recommendations. Activities included identifying current state, issues, opportunities and options for shared services across the consortia; performing a capability assessment of fibre networks across the region; and documenting findings and recommendations.
Deliverables: Findings and recommendations report.
What we did: Being presented with deliverables of varying quality and having difficulty ensuring consistency and integration between projects, the programme director requested that Equinox IT provide both remedial and forward-looking development process, quality and architecture guidance. The role included the provision of architectural guidance and stewardship across the full solution delivery spectrum, from involvement in RFP preparation through to ongoing quality assurance of vendor deliverables in deployed systems.
Deliverables: Programme solution architecture document, statement of work acceptance requirements, SLA requirements definition, contractual requirements definition, architecture review, code review, and standards adherence including IEEE 1028, 730 and 1471.
Consultant: Deane Sloan
What we did: Provided advisory and review services to support, guide and mentor the client’s information systems team to help them develop key enterprise architecture deliverables to support the client’s business and IT strategies. Activities included facilitating client workshops, identifying technical architecture issues, identifying candidate architecture options to pragmatically address issues, identifying candidate architecture artefacts and deliverables, prioritising and planning architecture activities, and mentoring and reviewing enterprise architecture development.
Deliverables: Architectural issues, candidate architecture options, candidate architecture artefacts and deliverables, findings and recommendations.
Consultant: Bill Ross
What we did: Equinox IT provided advice to an education sector organisation on their processes, technologies, software license management and capacity to resource new projects. The activities included business and data analysis for identity and access management, solution architecture for software licence management, assessing the suitability of current practices and technologies, and providing recommendations.
Deliverables: Identity and access management audit and analysis, service management data analysis, software asset management solution architecture, internet processes and technology assessment report.
Consultant: Matt Johnston
What we did: Equinox IT provided architecture services to an education sector organisation to help them implement an effective architecture practice. Activities included improving strategic planning capability – particularly the creation of meaningful roadmaps and plans to communicate direction outside of the information systems team; pragmatically capturing and modelling data, processes and systems using an open standard modelling language (ArchiMate); clarifying the purpose and scope of systems across the organisation; reviewing appropriate reference architectures and standards (Educause NGDLE, SCORM…); creating architectural principles and standards, and embedding them throughout analysis, design and implementation; improving the architecture team's consulting capability and working relationship with client business units outside of IT; aligning architectural processes with programme, project and change management, development and operation's processes; and mentoring the new architect roles as the practice was embedded.
Deliverables: Architecture team principles, standards and practices; introduction of ArchiMate; and architecture team capability improvement.
What we did: Provision of architecture services to identify candidate architectures, define scope, investigate technical options, and estimate costs as input into a business case for the client to undertake a three-year programme of work to modernise its core system. The programme also included modernising the client’s software development approach and Equinox IT helped define the introduction of new development and delivery approaches as part of the business case. Activities included defining an architectural target state for the modernisation programme; facilitating workshops and meetings with stakeholders and vendors to define, refine, and validate the business case and estimates; and developing a costing and estimation model.
Deliverables: The completion and approval of the project business case.
Consultant: Bill Ross
Consultant: Bill Ross
What we did: Providing infrastructure design and establishing an operating model to provide stable and effective operational support for a central government core business system undergoing a major refresh. The system represented the first use by the client of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). Equinox IT also enabled the client to have the future flexibility to contractually separate solution hosting, operational support, application support, and the actual staffing of the operation to separate vendors. We provided the infrastructure and deployment architecture needed to ensure clean separation of these concerns.
Deliverables: Pre-production and production infrastructure design including mapping of the CMO (Current Mode of Operation) to the FMO (Future Mode of Operation); aligning IaaS, backup and network services with operational support model; service assurance roles and resource assurance roles; identification of risk likelihood and consequence, applicable controls and residual risk profile; identity and access management.
What we did: Equinox IT reviewed and assessed the client’s core system architecture's and interdependencies; their software development practices, team capability, and code quality; and undertook a specific investigation into the impact of switching billing intervals. Activities included facilitating discovery workshops with the key system stakeholders and the development team; analysing the core systems architecture, data, and interdependencies; and reporting on findings.
Deliverables: Findings and recommendations report.
Consultant: Bill Ross
What we did: The incoming client CTO for a GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) sector client engaged Equinox IT to review the technology strategic plan and capital works programme, to provide guidance on whether their plan and projects were the best way to deliver on strategic business objectives, and whether the structure, processes, capability and capacity of the technology team were optimal to deliver the plan and work programme. The client was also establishing a programme management office (PMO), and had recently created a digital directorate, that were both implementing new planning and governance processes with a significant technology impact. Their proposed processes were reviewed and feedback provided to improve the alignment with technology planning and delivery.
Deliverables: Technology strategic plan review; technology capital works programme review; structure, roles and candidate selection advice; PMO and digital directorate process review.
What we did: Architecture services to collate, cross-reference, and verify business process, systems and architectural information to enable the creation of an ArchiMate enterprise architecture model with the goal of simplifying and rationalising the client's IT environment.
Deliverables: ArchiMate enterprise architecture model, architecture diagrams, and reports.
Consultant: Carl Weller
What we did: Equinox IT delivered services to establish an enterprise architecture that was aligned with the client's strategic direction and helped address organisational solution and data management issues.
Deliverables: Enterprise architecture principles, current state enterprise architecture model, inputs for 3-year programme plan, and enterprise architecture roadmap models.
Consultant: Bill Ross
What we did: Equinox IT provided a technical quality assurance review of a vendor's governance, ITIL service management approaches and supply chain management approaches for a cloud IaaS service offering. Activities included interviewing key people involved, reviewing procedures and approaches, and making recommendations.
Deliverables: IaaS solution review report.
What we did: Equinox IT provided independent architecture advice to a central government agency undertaking a complex core business replacement programme. The work involved several assignments over a number of years, with activities including reviewing solution architectures, identifying technical risks, providing software development and system integration guidance, assessing design processes, and recommending refinements.
Deliverables: RFP solution architecture enhancements, independent quality assurance reports, technical debt and risk review report.
Consultant: Matt Johnston
What we did: Equinox IT provided independent technical quality assurance for a central government agency for their infrastructure programmes including their merger with other organisations, the migration of their networks to an alternative provider, and migration and consolidation of datacentres. Activities included advising on structure, roles and candidate selection; reviewing the existing infrastructure roadmap; reviewing cross-project technical concerns; and facilitating cross-project technical collaboration between architects and technical leads.
Deliverables: Review findings and recommendations.
What we did: Equinox IT provided architecture services to identify, validate and blueprint the infrastructure required to support their strategic goals. This involved defining architectural principles and identifying and prioritising initiatives that would support organisational outcomes. We also provided enterprise architecture representation on the client’s ICT Architecture and Design Governance Meetings. Equinox IT also led the evaluation of approaches to digitise the client’s customer records, identifying a solution that more closely aligned with the client’s principles, requirements and operating model, and that could be implemented in a more progressive, cost-effective Agile manner. We assisted the client throughout the engagement of multiple vendors, and the establishment of ongoing vendor and change management practices to support iterative enhancement and support.
Deliverables: Draft Information Systems Strategic Plan (ISSP), represent Enterprise Architecture at ICT Architecture and Design Governance, options analysis for digitisation of customer records, assistance with vendor engagement, assistance with establishing ongoing vendor and change management practices to support ongoing iterative enhancement and support.
What we did: Equinox IT worked with the client’s architecture team to introduce the use of an enterprise architecture using the Sparx EA tool. Activities included establishing the EA repository structure - including the initial high-level modelling for the business, applications, data, and systems layers of the enterprise architecture; applying the GCIO EA taxonomy to the EA model; delivering training on Sparx EA, UML, and BPMN; writing usage guidelines for the repository and working with the architecture team to establish the conventions, standards, and patterns; and working with the client’s vendors to identify information sources such as CMDB and establishment of the technical reference model (TRM).
Deliverables: Sparx EA repository and base model, GCIO EA taxonomy, Sparx EA training, Sparx EA usage guidelines and technical reference model.
Consultant: Bill Ross
What we did: Equinox IT provided solution architecture services for a number of primary sector organisation projects and initiatives over multiple years. Activities included providing solution architecture advice, assistance with business case creation and solution architecture definition.
Deliverables: Solution architecture documents.
Consultant: Matt Johnston
What we did: Equinox IT provided technical services to compare two bodies of computer source code from two different organisations and provide expert opinion on whether one set of code was derived in terms of algorithms, structure, or inherit logic from the other. Activities included liaising with court appointed independent solicitor; establishing a code comparison approach, methodology, and tools; understanding the business domain context of both sets of source code; and undertaking code analysis and analysing evidence.
Deliverables: Expert opinion report of findings and conclusions.
Consultant: Bill Ross
What we did: Equinox IT provided architecture services to help a central government agency identify and evaluate the main high-level options for the future of a core business system. Activities included identifying and evaluating medium and long-term technical options for the core business system, determining pros, cons, and indicative costs for each option, and working with key stakeholders to evaluate the options and provide recommendations.
Deliverables: Option analysis report.
Consultant: Bill Ross
What we did: Equinox IT provided technical quality assurance of vendor deliverables for a central government agency. Activities included technical evaluation of RFP responses from perspective vendors; assessing the capability of the vendors to successfully undertake the work; establishing a statement of work and technical acceptance criteria; reviewing the architectural and technical deliverables to ensure appropriateness and quality; and reviewing ongoing technical deliverables from each iteration.
Deliverables: Evaluation findings, assessment findings, statement of work, acceptance criteria, review findings and recommendations.
Consultant: Bill Ross
What we did: Equinox IT assessed the current state of Agile adoption for a central government agency and provided the CIO and management team with the most valuable next steps for ongoing adoption. Activities included interviewing senior managers, delivery team members and business units to assess current state; assessing people and processes; identifying impediments and barriers to meeting the goals of the Agile adoption.
Deliverables: Problem affinity diagram, next steps impact map, Agile process adoption presentation with recommendations and next steps.
What we did: Equinox IT helped a central government agency to grow the capability of their support and development teams to take on larger projects. Activities included introducing Kanban as a continuous improvement mechanism; coaching team members on development practices, continuous integration and automated testing; updating processes to enable frequent Agile delivery of software releases; coaching business representatives on how to engage with an Agile delivery function.
Deliverables: Improved team capability.
What we did: Equinox IT helped a central government agency to introduce delivery processes improvements for a major programme of work with the purpose of reducing risk and increasing likelihood of success. The scope included software delivery teams, data warehousing and business intelligence.
Deliverables: Delivery process improvements.
What we did: Equinox IT assessed the current state of a central government agency's development team and provided recommendations for process improvement. Activities included interviewing team members, reviewing current management and development principles, and making recommendations to help achieve the stated objectives.
Deliverables: Development process assessment report and presentation.
What we did: Equinox IT used Microsoft Azure and Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) to demonstrate the benefits of DevOps to a central government agency. Azure and VSTS were used to build a custom deployment pipeline, using an existing client application as an exemplar. The end goal was to demonstrate the working pipeline to the entire IT department to acquire funding to continue building the pipeline. Activities included managing requirements from multiple client stakeholders; setting up VSTS; creating and configuring the VSTS build definition and release definition; configuring Azure virtual machines; building a custom report generation module which integrated with VSTS and summarised pass / fail details; configuring the build definition to run static code analysis, code coverage, unit tests, and functional tests (i.e. Selenium tests); and migrating one of the client on-premise web application to use Microsoft Platform as a Service (PaaS).
Deliverables: Existing client web application upgraded to use Microsoft Platform as a Service (PaaS), presentation to the client’s IT management team demonstrating the value of DevOps, re-useable deployment pipeline template that could be used for all new projects that the client starts, and documentation on how to setup a new project using the deployment pipeline.
Consultant: Matthew Wong
What we did: Equinox IT provided coaching and mentoring services to help a local government organisation's applications group and digital team adopt and apply DevOps practices.
Deliverables: Improved team capability.
What we did: Equinox IT assessed the capability of the in-house DevOps function for a central government agency ahead of a significant upcoming programme of work. The activities included interviewing people across IT and the wider organisation to understand the current state, identifying constraints to the programme delivery using the existing DevOps function, and making recommendations for improvements and next steps.
Deliverables: DevOps assurance report including organisational context, value stream map and a problem map.
What we did: Equinox IT worked with an internet service provider, providing assessment, coaching and training services to improve the IT team's use of Agile, DevOps and management practices and to engage better with the rest of the organisation.
Deliverables: Improved team capability.
What we did: Equinox IT worked with an internet product company, providing assessment, coaching and training services to improve the infrastructure team's use of Agile, DevOps and management practices.
Deliverables: Improved team capability.
What we did: Equinox IT introduced Scrum principles and practices to a newly formed central government business intelligence product team. The work included leading and coaching the team in the pragmatic application of Scrum, with the end goal of the team becoming self-sufficient and self-managing with the Scrum approach. Activities included acting as ScrumMaster; facilitating workshops; establishing ways of visualising work; running practices such as daily stand-ups, feature breakdown, backlog grooming, release planning, product roadmaps and user story mapping; and coaching team members.
Deliverables: Improved team capability.
Consultant: Valerie Rowe
What we did: Equinox IT provided advice to a utilities organisation to help them improve their IS project lifecycle and accelerate the process of creating business cases and obtaining approvals. Activities included leading workshops, reviewing current practices, and identifying process improvements. The work introduced the theme of 'just enough documentation to address the problem, priority, solution, cost, risk and delivery'.
Deliverables: Project lifecycle report, implementation recommendations, 'defining business benefits' and 'solution architecture overview' training.
Consultant: Matt Johnston
What we did: Provision of advice on the adoption of Scrum in the context of a large project, which was started using a waterfall methodology. Specifically in the areas of project management, estimation, reporting, and requirements management.
Deliverables: Workshops, new Scrum approaches, updated requirements management plan, and updated change management processes.
Consultant: Carl Weller
What we did: Investigating and providing technical trouble-shooting for an ongoing high-priority issue with a key central government agency business application. Activities included understanding the business context for the application; providing guidance on setting up a production-like test environment to reproduce the issue; identifying the root cause of the issues from production server logs, performance monitoring, and SQL call monitoring; reviewing the fix code from application vendor; and tracking progress.
Deliverables: Written findings, evidence and results of root cause analysis; assistance with determining and implementing the fix; and post production implementation monitoring.
Consultant: Matthew Wong
What we did: Equinox IT provided independent facilitation services for a series of estimation workshops.
Deliverables: Workshop notes and preliminary estimates.
Consultant: Paul Ramsay
What we did: Equinox IT provided independent workshop facilitation services for a responsibility assignment (RACI) workshop.
Deliverables: Workshop notes.
Consultant: Paul Ramsay
What we did: App developed using Apache Cordova to work as part of an outdoor teambuilding organisation's website, including support for offline use and ensuring all security concerns addressed.
Deliverables: Completed app implemented.
Consultant: Ashley Stewart
What we did: Providing software development coaching for an Equinox IT delivery team undertaking a central government agency business system development project. Activities included facilitating retrospectives, generating and analysing metrics for management reporting and continuous improvement, and implementing crisis response process changes.
Deliverables: Successful project releases.
What we did: Upgraded a web application to take data from a third party source and display it dynamically on a map. The activities included defining requirements, upgrading the technology platform, developing the interface, implementing the map changes, enhancing the user interface experience, testing (including cross browser testing), and documenting and deploying the changes into production.
Deliverables: Documented requirements, upgraded web content management system, external interface, and upgraded and tested web application.
Consultant: Matthew Cameron, Matthew Wong
What we did: Equinox IT provided full development services for a central government agency core business application. This was a multiple year project with numerous releases and ongoing enhancements. Equinox IT provided a full team of .Net developers and systems analysts / testers using Agile, Kanban and Acceptance Test Driven Development approaches. Each release was rigorously tested to ensure we consistently met the high expectations of the client. Equinox IT continues to support this core business application today.
Deliverables: Delivery and support of numerous core business application releases with documentation.
Consultant: Ashley Stewart, Valerie Rowe, Matthew Wong, Mike Player, Deane Sloan, Fiona Blunsdon
What we did: Development work on a manufacturing organisation's key product software platform was behind schedule and unlikely to be finished for the product release. Equinox IT introduced an Agile approach and took over the development effort to deliver the software platform required for the product.
Deliverables: Software platform for the product was delivered on time and on budget.
Consultant: Mike Player
What we did: Provided functional testing services for projects and BAU for a central government agency. The projects included a core systems upgrade project and an inter-agency data sharing and business workflow project. The activities included test plan writing, test case writing, system test execution, integration test execution, regression test execution, user acceptance test execution, database testing, SQL queries, test supervision and guidance, defect resolution, change request coordination, QA of other tester's work, and reporting of results.
Deliverables: Test plans, test cases, text execution, defect resolution, and test reports.
Consultant: Matthew Cameron
What we did: Testing of a mobile application for front office client managers to replace paper forms. The mobile application needed to integrate with existing business processes and existing core systems. Activities included understanding the client's requirements; writing test cases; functional testing of newly developed features on different devices (iPad Air and iPhone 6 Plus); user interface testing; database testing; interface testing; and establishing and maintaining a regression test suite.
Deliverables: Regression test suite - test cases that document the entire application, technical documentation for ongoing development and support, testing mobile application.
Consultant: Matthew Wong
What we did: Testing of re-developed system for managing products sold through retail outlets, including integrations with the core finance and point of sale systems. Activities included understanding the requirements, creating the automated test suite, writing acceptance tests and testing newly developed features.
Deliverables: System that met all identified requirements, extensive automated test suite, and documentation required for ongoing development of the application.
Consultant: Matthew Wong
What we did: Prepared and delivered an in-house training course to a central government team of business analysts and service designers covering business process modelling topics that had been customised to the specific context of the client.
Deliverables: Customised, in-house business process modelling training course.
Consultant: John Barris
What we did: Prepared a customised requirements writing course for a central government business analysis team and delivered it in-house a number of times, starting with the team's coaches.
Deliverables: Customised, in-house requirements writing training course.
Consultant: John Barris
What we did: Prepared and delivered an in-house training course for an established central government agency development team to help them adopt the pull-based Kanban method. Delivery included taking the team of nine through a Kanban simulator.
Deliverables: Provided a solid understanding of the Kanban method including how to measure time to market, the value stream, cycle time, lead-time, WIP limits and retrospectives.
Consultant: Ashley Stewart
What we did: Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) configuration and training including definition of build and test approaches and process and workflow development. Consulting advice on Agile value measurement and helping the team work in more effective ways using DevOps, build pipeline, continuous delivery and automated testing.
Deliverables: VSTS and development team practices configured specifically for needs of team.
Consultant: Ashley Stewart
What we did: Equinox IT created a re-usable deployment and accreditation pipeline in Microsoft Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) and Azure for a central government agency to use internally, with vendors and with the sector. The pipeline improves speed and quality and provides assurance that products can be supported and maintained post-delivery.
Deliverables: An accrediting deployment pipeline in VSTS and Azure, a presentation and demonstration of pipeline capability, next steps for DevOps adoption and use.
What we did: Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (TFS) configuration and training including definition of build and test process, automated testing and email server.
Deliverables: TFS and email server configuration and migration.
Consultant: Ashley Stewart
What we did: Equinox IT developed a core business software application for a central government agency and today continues to support, maintain and enhance that software as a managed service. As part of the work Equinox IT hosts the application, provides product leadership, operational user support and training, technical support, and ongoing maintenance and enhancements.
Deliverables: Fully managed, supported and maintained core business software application, including user support and training.
Consultant: Valerie Rowe
What we did: Equinox IT developed a core business software application for a central government agency and today continues to support, maintain and enhance that software as a managed service. The activities include supporting the production software, incident management using ITIL processes, writing and testing SQL data fixes, implementing and testing new features, delivering new releases, testing and fixing defects, writing automated tests and conducting code reviews.
Deliverables: Fully managed, supported and maintained core business software application.
Consultant: Matthew Cameron, Oleg Melnikov, Matthew Wong, Valerie Rowe
