Automation Consultants is an Agile and DevOps consultancy. In this case study, we share how we guided our client through a digital transformation, using the Atlassian techstack and suite of Tempo solutions to reshape their processes and deliver long-term success.
Our client is an IT consultancy in the Defence sector, specialising in security, Cloud infrastructure and secure application development. Their services have aided major decisions at the highest level of government and military operations.
Working in such a high-stakes, fast-paced landscape, it was vital that our client’s own team members had utter confidence in their internal tools.
Looking to the future with Agile and Cloud
In Spring 2024, our client began a significant transformation of their business practices, replacing their traditional, waterfall-dominant approach with more iterative, productive and collaborative Agile ways of working. This included a proposed move to Cloud products and working practices which reflected their uniquely high-visibility, ever-evolving world.
Enter Automation Consultants (AC). We collaborated with our client over a period of three months to implement the full Atlassian Cloud stack of Jira, Jira Service Management and Confluence. Embedding this new Cloud technology revitalised the organisation’s processes and guided them away from their reliance on legacy tools, such as Microsoft Project, Excel and other applications that were no longer fit for purpose.
With decades of experience in tooling optimisation and best practice, and as an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner, AC worked hand-in-hand with our client to support them throughout this process.
Adopting Tempo's SPM platform
Change didn’t end there.
For such a multi-faceted organisation, and with three guiding pillars (Effective Time, Efficient Cost, Exquisite Quality), it was crucial that our client could see when, where and how value was generated for their customers and stakeholders.
Alongside this, our client had to manage multiple cross-project dependencies and, perhaps most crucially, needed to attain the highest levels of security and governance. With all these considerations, it was hard for them to visualise the full picture of their operations.
Thankfully, AC had the perfect partner in mind. Enter the Tempo suite of SPM solutions!
What benefits did Tempo solutions deliver?
Capacity Planner and Structure PPM
With several multi-year projects on the go simultaneously, all pulling from the same resource pools, bringing new opportunities into the business was a challenge for our client. It was difficult to submit bids and proposals without a clear outlook on the state of existing work.
With Capacity Planner and Structure PPM, these challenges are now a thing of the past. Using the generic resources feature and Structure’s tight integration with planned work, our client can easily identify constraints and bottlenecks, and feed new work to its teams when it makes sense to do so. Using the Gantt Charts for Structure PPM add-on (sold separately), they can now simply drag, drop, and shift around delivery timelines, and have plans updated in real time.
In our client’s field of business, a single customer can collaborate on several complex engagements. Thanks to Tempo, visualising these and their relationships is also now a breeze! Flex items provided a quick way to parcel up projects, epics, and tasks into its existing hierarchy of programmes and portfolios.
Using a single tool for the entire businesses’ cross-project reporting has further benefits. Every project delivered by our client is different from the rest. By providing project managers with the ability to serve themselves in creating customised Structures with adjoining Gantt charts, they are able to fulfil their own reporting needs without being constrained by unfamiliar or hard to use reporting formats. This has enabled a ‘Do what works for you’ centric approach, whilst ensuring the tools themselves are standardised, and visibility can be provided across all layers of the organisation.
Tempo Timesheets
Now that our client had a better grasp on work to be completed, those projects needed to be tracked accurately and delivered to their own customers’ expectations. Timesheets was perfect here.
Taking the strain from senior leadership and placing more power into the hands of value generators, spent time is now logged against individual tasks in a way that wasn’t possible before. With Tempo reports, these metrics are easily summarised on a team, project and customer level, with minimal administrative upkeep, thanks to auto-updating period time frames.
Financial Manager
The review of spent time was also very important for our client, requiring multiple layers of authorisation at the line and project management levels. This was simple with Financial Manager’s approval feature, which was separate from Timesheets approvals at the team level.
AC generated Financial Manager projects corresponding to both our client’s customer accounts and Jira projects. Using Financial Manager Portfolios, these were made to reflect our client’s unique ‘one customer – many projects’ structure.
Are you ready to embrace the future of Cloud? Talk to us today to discover how we can guide you through your Atlassian Cloud journey, from migration to process optimisation.
And, if you’d like to discover more about Tempo’s suite of solutions, head over to the Atlassian Marketplace to find out more!
In closing
For our client, the adoption of Atlassian Cloud infrastructure, alongside Tempo’s suite of project, portfolio and time management solutions, has been revolutionary for its business practices.
Through highly effective and positive collaboration with Automation Consultants, gone are the days of strict waterfall delivery, inefficient sales pipelines and a lack of centralised visibility. Now, the organisation is able to emerge into new and impactful ways of working, and focus on generating value for its customers.
Our client is still in the infancy stages of adopting these tools and, as with all changes, there’ll be inevitable learning curves. However, with Atlassian Cloud and Tempo leading the charge in transformation, it’s guaranteed to move forward as an efficient, optimised and future-facing organisation.
Contact us today and book your free consultation with Automation Consultants
We offer a free 30-minute consultation, to give you the opportunity to pick our brains – with no obligation. You can share your challenges and objectives, and we’ll provide initial recommendations. It’s utterly informal and may be the start you need on your Atlassian journey to unlock greater collaboration, connection and value. Simply fill in the form below, and we’ll be in touch!
