A splash of colour
A day in the life of.. Vodafone Qatar
Joana Panaca (Analysis Community lead) went behind the scenes of the Vodafone Qatar project.
Who is the client? And what are we doing?
Vodafone Qatar aims to provide an improved customer experience to its users by taking advantage of new technologies and design trends. In October 2018, Celfocus started a project with the proposal of a solution comprises the following components:
- Website: Engaging the user with Vodafone brand and updating with the latest services and products. Celfocus proposes to create a quick and responsive website that allows customers, and potential new customers, to know more about Vodafone.
- Self-care: Promoting a do it yourself approach by empowering end-users to manage their services online, reducing pressure on assisted channels, and increasing a transparent relation with Vodafone.
- E-Shop: Following the correct user journey, the solution will leverage all platform users to access easily both products and solutions. The Omnichannel sales process empowers users to quickly find and purchase the desired items.
- Back office: Enabling management users to operate the solution. Monitor and configure the solution. The administration back-office is composed of several tools provided by the components of the solution (Content Manager, Tealium, Adobe Target, Adobe Analytics, and Celfocus Omnichannel Product Catalogue & Backoffice)
From waterfall to Agile…
The Celfocus team worked hard to deliver the phase I of the project in July. The go-live date could not be delayed since VF-Qatar would shut down the old portal on 1 August 2019. Some leftovers remained that have been implemented while the setup of Agile team have occurred.
For phase II, Vodafone defined a 9-month roadmap/ where they are expecting some major functionalities.
During the setup phase, there was an Analysis phase of 2 weeks where there were daily workshops to refine the user stories.
Have you ever been part of an agile stand-up meeting?
It was October 23rd, 10h30 in the morning and room 521 was completely full of people. Everyone standing up, except me who was there to observe and write about this experience. It was the Vodafone Qatar WebPortal Revamp Agile team’s daily meeting.
It's a stand-up meeting to make sure it is effective and short. Besides the people in the room, there is always someone remotely connected from Porto, or from home.
The daily goals are defined by Pedro Abreu, the Delivery Manager of this project. It was almost the end of the sprint and the team was preparing the delivery to UAT and some issues were raised.
Meanwhile, the Kanban board is projected on the TV so that everyone keeps track of the Tasks status update. Andreia Rocha (Scrum Master) uses the Trello mobile app to update the board on the fly.
João Colaço, the technical lead provides guidance on the daily tasks of each team member, enhancing what is the priority and who must focus on what.
By the end, a quick round the table so that everyone can raise any issue that could compromise the sprint goal.
The meeting ended and everyone knew what they had to do.
Backlog Grooming session
There was no time for a break because there was another meeting starting with VF-Qatar’s Product Owner – the Backlog daily meeting, whose objective is the refinement of user stories (clarify questions, raise risks, dependencies, etc) to create a mature Backlog. At this stage, since the agile phase is still in the beginning, Backlog grooming sessions occur on daily basis as the main challenge is to have User Stories ready for Sprint Planning.
The Team
An Agile team with 14 people was set (the majority from the phase I, in waterfall). 14 people is a big team for Agile, but this team seems to be synchronized, committed, supporting each other and with great teamwork spirit.
Pedro Abreu is the Delivery Manager and Andreia Rocha is the Scrum Master of this Team.
The rest of the team is composed by:
Inês Horta (Analyst/Value Owner)
Cristina Ungureano (UX)
Inês preto Paulo (UI & Front-end)
João Colaço - DEV Team Leader
DEV Team:
João Carlos Antunes (WCS)
Pedro Peixoto (WCS)
João Alves (WCS)
Carlos Pinto (WCS)
João Teixeira (WCS)
Anthony Duarte (WCS)
Pedro Candeias (Omnichannel)
Luis Messias (Omnichannel)
Although the team is very big and is not co-located (there are people in Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra and Qatar) , they use Microsoft Teams to communicate with everybody and the Daily meetings have proven to be a good strategy to overcome the challenge.
Happy Team, happy customer
Another reason for being such a Happy team is because VF-Qatar has just experienced its Team Building event.
It was a sunny and healthy morning, doing a Hiit outdoor class. There was time to exercise, to have fun and laugh, always straighten out the relationships amongst colleagues.
