Pearson Plc is an education company that operates worldwide and is headquartered in London, Uk. Its six primary business units are North American Education, International Education, Professional, the Financial Times, Interactive Data and Penguin Publishing. The vice president of product management within the Digital Learning office of the North American Education unit located in Chandler, Arizona starts to transform the product development procedures to better satisfy the needs of his customers in the education market, specifically in transitioning from using an off-shored waterfall software development model to an on shore Agile model. When the vice president first joined Pearson a year earlier, the Digital Learning unit had spent considerable resources developing a major upgrade to one of its educational applications products.
The very first variant of this new product was challenged by the disconnect between what the software development group was delivering and what the vice-president's customers desired. He's faced with a decision to keep focusing on the particular methodology they had implemented (Scrum) or go to a new one (Kanban). Moreover, he has to contemplate expanding his focus to help drive Agile methodologies with other groups in his business unit and outside his business unit. These selections must be made at a possibly critical time for his products as his organization deals with the growing pains related to the shift to Agile.
PUBLICATION DATE: February 23, 2012 PRODUCT #: W11744-HCB-ENG
This is just an excerpt. This case is about TECHNOLOGY & OPERATIONS
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