The “go liveâ€' buzz of a major HR tech implementation is exhausting and thrilling at the same time. We build big project teams, work our tails off over months, or in some cases years, to design, build, test, engage and pump up all the work to “go live.â€' We gear ourselves up for a big payoff at the launch of new technology. Then we flip the switch with fanfare, celebration, warranty, defect resolution, etc. And… What? The operational teams find themselves holding the proverbial HR tech baby, left to figure out what's next.

It's a position that many of us have been in and I think a big part of this short-sighted view on the go-live stems from the legacy of on-premise system delivery. We have been conditioned for so long to believe that whatever is delivered from an HR transformation project will be in existence until the next wave of investment comes along.

However, with technology being the way that it is now, there is much more opportunity to push the speed of project delivery with a minimum viable product mindset and then drive continuous evolution and improvement post the initial delivery.

BUT… a mindset of fast delivery also comes with a big risk – what if your view of a minimum viable product isn't aligned with the view of the rest of the organisation? What if your capability to delivery quickly outpaces the organisational capacity for change? How do you make sure that your minimum viable product continues to evolve and improve after delivery? These are some of the “post projectâ€' questions that live on after the excitement of initial delivery.

It's certainly a tricky landscape and one which my team at BUPA spent a long time navigating. I'll be presenting the full story of BUPA's transformation at HR Innovation & Tech Fest NZ. In the meantime, here's a summary of how we approached (and are still working on) our HR tech transformation.

4 Technologies, 1 Scrum Team and a Lot of Willingness to Try

Like most organisations, we built our HR implementation around a “go-liveâ€' date. We had an amazing program and team that we assembled to help drive changes across the organisation and I don't want to take anything away from anyone who worked on that team. It was one of the best teams I've ever been part of and broke down some previously unbreakable barriers to move us ahead and drive the initial change for the organisation.

However, what happened after the larger program went away was an organisation and a people function trying to evolve and find the right ways to engage with new technologies, processes and service delivery models. Additionally, despite the design, engagement, change and testing we found that things just didn't work as we had expected them to when we launched. Transactional volumes were significantly higher than expected, some processes required more explanation and support than anticipated (no matter how “simpleâ€' we designed them or “consumer gradeâ€' the technology was), and some things just didn't work and needed to be rethought.

Responding to this on the fly, with a live system and an operational team trying to find their feet was… tricky. We had to find a model that allowed us to capture and prioritise focus, make meaningful progress, and engage our stakeholders in that progress.

It was at this point that we started to introduce more Agile principles and Scrum delivery into our ways of working. We added “User Experience Testingâ€' to our design and test approach to compliment more traditional test cycles. We got better at building a backlog and creating visibility around what would be delivered and by when, including a move to themed monthly releases so we could build monthly engagement campaigns that aligned to our technical delivery.

We used the challenges as momentum and opportunity to reshape delivery and change the narrative around continuous improvement and delivery in transformation, which opened up a new conversation on how transformation is evolutionary and doesn't have an “end date.â€'

Agility is Hard Work

One of the cautions that I remember hearing (and wish I had given more thought before going live) was that it can be challenging to keep up with the vendor pushed upgrades that happen somewhere between 2-4 times a year. After we went live, we subsequently flipped our team into monthly release cycles to continue to push our own changes, enhancements and fixes. This helped us build a strong delivery discipline and understanding on how to introduce and manage changes with our users. We had 5 releases under our belt as a team before a vendor upgrade came along – this allowed us to tackle it with confidence and understanding on how to adopt, adapt and deliver.

When you move into this world the evolution and continuous delivery doesn't stop, however it's within your gift to determine how much you control it versus letting it control you. Every vendor is going to have a different cycle of upgrades and forced enhancements. This is one of the great benefits of cloud technology and why we are all inclined to invest in the first place, however it's only great if you're set up to keep pace in the first place. Understanding how you are going to work in this environment is so important, otherwise, you'll be caught on the back foot and constantly running to keep up.

The Next Wave – No, We Never Stop!

There's still more to be done from a technical delivery perspective and the team are working on new modules and the next wave of functionality and process. We also have our sights set on chat automation to support our Tier 1 teams and robotics process automation to strip out more and more manual activities.

Perhaps more exciting for me, we are evolving our ways of working to accommodate new geographies and new areas of the People Function. In the next few months we will have scaled Scrum for the Digital People Solutions team globally, working in scrum teams across multiple locations in the UK and Australia.

Additionally, we are continuing our work to bring a continuous release and prioritisation framework across the entire People Function in Australia & New Zealand, helping better focus and align so we deliver continuous improvement and value to our end users.

It's exciting to look ahead and see what's possible as we continue to build into the future.  I can't wait to share the details of our transformation project at HR Innovation & Tech Fest 2018.

About the Author

Dana Schulenburg is Director of People Operations, Digital Solutions and Support – Bupa Australia & New Zealand. Whilst his title may be a mouthful, his core accountabilities are simple, managing BUPA's People Function of 170 team members across Australia and New Zealand; driving continuous improvement across the systems they use as a People Function; and providing support to colleagues around people processes and policies.