“We knew we had to move to digital but we just didn’t know how. Having previously invested time and money in a small number of trial projects, our progress had slowed down and we needed to learn how to speed up.”
Head of Digital Programmes | Pearson
Pearson, the world’s largest education company and book publisher, faced a critical challenge: transitioning from a traditional publishing model to a digital-first approach. The newly appointed Head of Digital Programmes needed to launch a portfolio of new educational products, but a waterfall approach was slowing down progress, leaving a vital new revenue stream untapped.
With the aim of developing more of a ‘startup’ culture, we embedded our team into the Pearson offices, coaching in agile and lean product development as the team were applying new skills. Project Managers were converted to the Product Owner role, hierarchy was dissolved and Scrum ceremonies were put into diaries, starting with daily standups, Show and Tells and retrospectives.
Head of Digital Programmes | Pearson
“Learning on the job was a challenge, but having the Unboxed team working alongside us, and applying what we were learning to this project, really sped up our progress. We were learning the skills we needed to know.“
On a mission to deliver valuable results, three legacy projects, which had been stuck in the pre-planning stages for over three years, were selected to pilot. Each was targeted at different learner groups to open up this new digital offering to wider market combinations. The first step: carrying out a series of inception workshops to kick-start the product backlogs of stories to begin.
By the early sprints, the teams were in a position to begin carrying out a series of Discovery discussions and workshops with end users. Early stage prototyping was used to trial potential features, and usability and design testing to begin forming an initial direction. The feedback gathered was also used to begin refining interfaces and trial ideas for a first round of potential features to be delivered.
"Having the Product Owners and developers involved in the design process was the starting point in creating a cross-functional team. Cross functional teams deliver more value over a broader skill set.” - Martyn Evans | Head of Product | Unboxed
Newly deployed features were shared during fortnightly Show & Tells. Stakeholders were seeing an increase in tangible progress and giving their feedback on a regular basis, directly from the first sprint – something they weren’t used to with traditional “big bang” waterfall releases. Sprint-by-sprint, buy-in from stakeholders was gradually increasing as results were being seen - the project was quickly gaining momentum.
“What raised eyebrows was how fast we were able to get something in front of the users. Every two weeks we’d bring back the next iteration for feedback, continuously sharing progress.”
Head of Digital Programmes | Pearson
After just four sprints, three MVPs had been released, with one launched publicly at the BETT show - the world's leading education technology event, attracting 35,000+ visitors. From developing the skill set to accelerate in digital product development, the Pearson team is now in a position to expand this to the rest of their portfolio. Opening up this new digital learning revenue stream has paved the direction from the traditional publishing model.
“In just four sprints we had a working prototype to share at one our key calendar events. We have taken the first steps into building our new digital learning product offering and now have a clear roadmap of how to go forward with this.”
Head of Digital Programmes | Pearson
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