NEAMB
Agile-Based Development Provides Ongoing Enhancements and Optimizations
The Challenge
The National Education Association Member Benefits (NEAMB), a subsidiary of the National Education Association (NEA), offers discounts and benefits on travel, insurance, finance, and more for teachers.
After launching their new Sitecore-based site, NEAMB wanted to continue to enhance and optimize their site to ensure it stays current and responsive to users’ needs. This included new work, including new requirements from the marketing department.
At the start, however, all the work wasn’t yet defined, so there needed to be flexibility to easily switch tasks and change priorities; now and in the future.
The Solution
To provide the required flexibility, Oshyn introduced Wave, a proprietary version of agile development. The first step was to define the Wave-based project and introduce the client to the methodology. The Oshyn team members from the previous project were carried over to the new project in order to improve communication and create a fast, responsive team capable of building and maintaining site components.
Oshyn provided the opportunity to execute any task from new development, maintenance, or support in a single project and covered many of the possible future requirements.
Jira was utilized to provide full transparency on tasks and progress to NEAMB and their marketing team.
A UI and Unit testing system was integrated to reduce the testing time and increase the test coverage. Since the client was part of the team, User Acceptance Testing also became part of the process to complete a task, reducing the overall task time.
The Outcome
NEAMB’s first Wave project was completed successfully, adding new functionality to the site — including all remaining open tasks from the site redesign project. Oshyn completed 20 sprints and 405 story points at an average velocity of 20.4 story points.
The NEAMB team was introduced to a methodology which provides visibility and structure that facilitates their internal planning. They now have a clear view of current work items as well as future tasks.
A new statement of work (SOW) has been signed to continue the work, and the client has adopted an agile methodology internally.