The 2012 Rockton Review

Written By Kelli Sexton,
CEO of Rockton Software

You might not know it from the outside, but we have made significant changes this past year at Rockton Software. I thought perhaps some of our changes might be beneficial for your organization to see, so here are the major changes.

• Agile Development – This is by far the biggest paradigm shift we have had as an organization. As you may already know, Rockton has committed to a substantial software solution built on Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Rockton Connect. We attempted to spec out the design using our usual development practice of Waterfall. Unfortunately, we kept running into delays, roadblocks, and learning spikes. We knew we needed to tackle the project in a different way, so that is when we embraced the Agile methodology. Agile met an organic need of better procession of tasks and as a result has been embraced by everyone because it was not a top-down decision of direction, but an answer to a true need.

• Kanban Boards – Out of the Agile methodology, we were introduced to Kanban boards. Of course, we all had a typical list of things to do, but there is something significantly beneficial about being able to track your entire backlog in one single place, and methodically move them along the path from Backlog to In Progress to Completed. A sense of empowerment has overtaken the entire staff in this transition. The Kanban boards are the perfect compliment from our busy non-development team.

• More Meetings – As crazy as it sounds, we are actually benefiting from more meetings. Our biggest bang-for-buck meetings are the daily Scrum and twice-weekly Stand Up meetings. These come directly from the Agile process. The meetings are intended to be short (less than 15 minutes) where each person reports what they worked on during the time from our last meeting to this one, what they are committed to work on between now and the next Scrum/Stand Up, and any Roadblocks they have encountered. Our development staff has these meetings daily and our non-development staff has them twice a week.  Making commitments to the entire team is very powerful and uncovering roadblocks as they happen rather than weeks down the road has greatly increased our efficiency.

• SharePoint – We started working with SharePoint about 18 months ago but opted for a slow adoption. This past year, we really started leveraging the power of SharePoint. With different departments handling different business needs, being able to track all related information for each department has really helped us leverage our knowledge base.

Through our adoption of these processes, we are communicating more effectively, tackling our highest priorities routinely, and our overall job satisfaction has risen dramatically. It is my hope that you may find our success beneficial to you and your organization.  We are fired up and excited to see what 2013 has to offer us, here at Rockton!


To keep updated on Rockton Software in 2013, follow us on Twitter!