Department of Home Affairs – ICT Testing Centre of Excellence

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Online workshop facilitation for successful key planning

Client

Department of Home Affairs

Services

Program and Project Planning

Year

2020

The Department of Home Affairs recognised a need to modernise and enhance their existing ICT testing services. The first major step in the journey began with the establishment of the ICT Testing of Centre of Excellence (TCoE) in July 2020. The TCoE incorporates existing testing functions into the group and in doing so will aim to deliver on its goals of:
Establishing a single point of engagement for all testing services.
Providing improved quality outcomes for programs and projects.
Helping the Department move to contemporary development and delivery models.
The TCoE Vision states that the new group will modernise test service delivery for the Department and achieve process and resource optimisation. Given the importance and the breadth of this change, it is important that all of the groups key stakeholders are engaged and consulted to help shape the vision and framework for the new group.

Pragma was engaged to facilitate two workshops which first brought together managers and then the leads of relevant areas. These workshops were hosted online due to COVID-19 physical distancing restrictions, using a variety of engaging tools and methods to collaborate with the teams.

The goal of the workshops was to engage the group on what the functions of the TCoE would be and how it will operate. The planned outcome from the workshops was to define the next steps needed to achieve success and plan some key milestones over the following 18 months.

Groups used a ‘Stop, Continue, Start’ ideation method to identify actions the TCoE should stop doing, what things should they continue doing, and what new things should they start doing across the six pillars of the TCoE Vision. The groups also completed a SWOT analysis of their section and current ways of working.

The ideas and themes that surfaced across activities were then brought together in a roadmap which sought to identify action items that could be executed to achieve the vision of the TCoE. Then roadmap was to cover short term (under 6 months), medium term (6-18 months) and long term (over 18 months) timelines.