LOGIN 05 May 2021
GPI ScrumMaster Stephen Jeffries describes how GPI’s agile approach aids teamworking, collaboration and project excellence.
Joining a new organisation is always a challenging time. Understanding the company culture, learning new systems, technology and quickly coming up to speed with fast-moving projects. GPI is no exception, as their new ScrumMaster, listening to how the GPI teams have implemented Agile in the past, understanding what worked well and not so well for them is always fascinating and informative.
Improving the way companies work, the project outcomes, and user experience is at the heart of what GPI do. Utilising the Agile project approach is key to achieving this on large projects, in particular the recent pulse™ 2.0, both with our internal teams and with any partners.
The ScrumMaster is responsible for ensuring the team follows agile values, principles, processes, and practices that the team agreed they would use. Overall, the ScrumMaster is crucial when ensuring project success, establishing an environment where the team can be most productive.
I joined at an interesting time in GPI, with the company beginning development on the successor to GPI pulse™ application, pulse™ 2.0. The project required a large team of developers, testers and UX designers all eager to bring an improved platform to the market, with more capabilities and robust data in order drive more effective market access strategies. The use of Scrum was key to delivering the project on time, and to continuously improve the process throughout.
Agile is built around the concept of delivering the most value first, focusing on what is most valuable to the end-user. This approach helps to provide a better solution for the client, focusing on delivering what matters to them most. Pulse™ 2.0 was built on this idea, delivering a powerful solution that solely focuses on providing a workable solution to the industry’s market access challenges faced by our clients every day.
Now with time to look back and reflect, as any good ScrumMaster will encourage you to do, we can deem Agile a success. The Scrum framework and processes were quickly up and running, communication was good, and most importantly, challenges were overcome. The importance of a test and learn environment, enabled by an agile approach, made it easy to reflect on each sprint and apply lessons learned to the next iteration. The result was a project delivered on schedule and a platform that brings a more dynamic, intuitive, and seamless user experience with two powerful modules in one analytics platform.
We are now a few Sprints into the following Project, improving on what was delivered by listening to user’s feedback and delivering the features they value most. Just like the new pulse 2.0 application, this is just the beginning. The team’s Agile journey will continue, ever improving and providing quality for our clients and partners.
To find out more about GPI how e can provide you with unique insight into the full market access journey, speak with a consultant.