For more than 100 years, Booz Allen Hamilton has been at the forefront of technology and management consulting, solving some of the most challenging and complex problems for private business and government.
For more than 100 years, Booz Allen Hamilton has been at the forefront of technology and management consulting, solving some of the most challenging and complex problems for private business and government.
The Situation
Today, Booz Allen is redefining consulting - combining strategy with technology to provide digital consultancy and solutions. A long-time advocate of agile practices and philosophy, their systems delivery practice have embraced agile methods since 2003.
“Agile has been in Booz Allen’s DNA for 100 years”, says Chief Technologist, Tim Meyers. “We’re an innovation-driven company – always reinventing and keeping ahead of the market.” Mr Meyers is the director of the Systems Delivery University at Booz Allen and oversees the professional development of over 5,000 systems and software professionals. He co-founded the company’s agile coaching service and developed its Agile Playbook.
When seeking support to scale the company’s agile education program, Mr Meyers reached out to Skills Development Group. With a strong baseline around agile fundamentals, he was looking at a solution to provide more role-based agile training.
The Solution
Working in partnership with Skills Development Group, Booz Allen now has 11 scalable ICAgile accredited courses as a platform from which to grow their agile capability. Building on the agile Fundamentals course, staff now have access to accredited training and agile pathways for systems engineers, agile coaches, product owners, software testers and project managers. With Skills Development Group having a strong local presence, courses have been delivered in a range of locations including Virginia, California, Washington and Georgia.
“I’m a big believer in ICAgile’s approach to education and Skills Development Group have been heavily influential in the development of the ICAgile tracks and to agile thought leadership", said Mr Meyers. “No other education provider came close in terms of the number of programs and the tracks that were ICAgile accredited, and we also had the option of licensing courses. It was a one-stop-shop.”
The Result
“I was expecting Skills Development Group to be great, and they were even better than I expected,” said Mr Meyers. “I’ve been really pleased with the relationship and the quality of the trainers. Skills Development Group has been a fantastic partner - open and flexible to our ideas.”
One of the highlights for Mr Meyers was being able to co-create programs specific to Booz Allen’s requirements. “We were seeking a PMI-ACP course, and Skills Development Group went away and quickly built the course, and likewise for a DevOps program.”
To date, the collaboration has seen over 800 people trained. “The biggest outcome had been seeing a real mindset and culture shift and being able to gain deeper expertise.”
Booz Allen in conjunction with Skills Development Group will continue to build the agile mindset and embed agility across all aspects of their delivery to prepare their teams, and their customers, for the changing digital landscape.
