Accelerated Solution Development

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I’m working on an initiative that is following a different approach for building capabilities on a business unit. We call it “Accelerated Solution Development”.

Major phases

If you google it, you will find different similar approaches as this. This one follows the following steps:

  1. Discover,
  2. Prototype,
  3. Pilot,
  4. Scale.

1. Discover

The objective is to understand the different business challenges of the customer.

The main activities covered are:

  • Define funding for the initiative
  • Allocate the resources under the required roles.
  • Implement Business model canvas
  • Compare solution vision vs canvas
  • Define epics (user stories)
  • Define the initial functional architecture
  • Research technical options
  • Attend demos (for those who has available)
  • Commercial approach
  • Define a solution approach based on the user stories.

The main outcome of this step is to have a defined solution approach for the customer business problem sufficiently defined in order to enable the customer to approve a prototype.

Once the customer is committed to this we jumps to next stage,

2. Prototype

The objective is think, design and create a prototype to address the customer business challenge.

The main activities covered are:

  • Design concepts and constraints,
  • Refine epics (user stories),
  • Prototype solution architecture,
  • Define the sprint plans,
  • Develop the prototype, demo at the end of each sprint and get feedback.

At the end, we should have a solution design, a prototype developed and demonstrated.

In case the customer is convinced, then we will go to the next stage,

3. Pilot

The main objective is to implement a minimum viable product (MVP), deployed as business pilot.

The main activities covered are:

  • Define the pilot agreement,
  • Develop MVP with the updated user stories,
  • Define the sprint plans,
  • During the different sprints, develop, test and demo the MVP,
  • Deploy the MVP pilot,
  • Make KPIs measures, get customer feedback,

The outcome is the MVP pilot deployed to be used by business on specific defined scenarios. With the KPI measures, we also can prepare the next stage,

4. Scale

The main objective is implement a full live production release of the solution,

The main activities covered are:

  • Solution design and engineering,
  • Finalize the commercial model,
  • Sign the contract,
  • Production development,
  • Business deployment,
  • Move to service mode.

The main outcome of this phase is to have a scaled production environment with continuous delivery, integration platform, operations teams and processes.

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