TerraQuest Solutions have been delivering the Planning Portal for England and Wales in partnership with a government agency since 2016. We helped guide them through a business transformation programme, expanding their internal software development capability to tackle an increased workload while adopting agile practices to keep up with the demands of their customers.
TerraQuest are a specialist land referencing business providing GIS and Data Services to both Public and Private businesses.
They made the strategic decision to undergo a business transformation and data transformation programme that included expanding their internal software development capability to facilitate the increased workload and adopt agile, which were required to keep up with the demands of their customers.
The existing software development team had two distinct challenges. Firstly, it was facing a period of massive growth but existing practices had been established when the team was smaller. Secondly, the development tools used by the team had been implemented as individual point solutions and not part of a strategically aligned process.
To assist TerraQuest, we delivered a package of work consisting of two distinct services.
The first service was a DevOps Tooling Review. This took the form of a four-stage process.
The second service was the implementation of a company-wide development approach of Agile SCRUM. This involved working with TerraQuest to establish the best elements of Agile SCRUM for their specific business needs. Critically, a manageable framework was created to ensure that it could be freely adopted into the business.
Once this stage was completed, we set about supporting TerraQuest in establishing the new rituals involved, such as changes in estimation process, retrospectives, and collective responsibility for the success of each Sprint.
To achieve business change, we were able to help establish documentation and structured training and mentoring to model the approach and get Agile culture embedded in the TerraQuest team.
“A key business benefit from the engagement with Synetec is that we now have a clear roadmap on how we can execute the business strategy and understanding of both how to run a true agile development operation and the best DevOps tools to use to support this; and have successfully transitioned to implement these.”
David Bellamy, Operations Director, TerraQuest
The outcome of the adoption of Agile SCRUM and CI/CD with us has meant that TerraQuest has become self-sufficient in maintaining a culture of best practice software development.
TerraQuest are getting faster and more efficient at delivering software projects both on their own and in conjunction with third party partners like us.
“Engaging with Synetec throughout the process enabled us to become faster and more efficient at delivering complex software development projects. The engagement also provided the business with a stronger platform to not only attract but successfully recruit and onboard talented people at an exciting time for the business. I would recommend any organisation looking to embark upon an agile technology business transformation to talk to Synetec to experience benefits and achieve the successful outcomes they can bring to your business.”
Laurie Cunningham, CTO, TerraQuest
If you would like to discuss a bespoke software development project, challenge or goal please book a 30 minute Clarity Call with us and we'll point you in the right direction (even if you chose not to work with us)
