Agile Consulting: Ensuring Rapid Electronic Results

Challenge: Navigating Technical Challenges

In an effort to make their world-class services more available to customers, one of the top reference laboratories in the country launched an initiative to bring medical diagnostics testing to the home by providing accurate, rapid turnaround for their medical diagnostic testing. They had an existing website where customers could order testing supplies, but results were returned by “snail mail” and could take days to be received. There was a need for integration between the website and the laboratory’s internal systems and agile consulting so that tests could be received and processed, and there would be no delay in the customer receiving the results electronically.

Initially, the laboratory’s technical department intended to complete the project internally, but a mid-project technical challenge required a course correction. A team from IntelliTect augmented the laboratory’s software team to assist with navigating through issues that threatened to derail the laboratory’s efforts.

Solution: Augmenting a Technical Team with Agile Consulting

The experienced team members of IntelliTect helped the lab’s technical team use new approaches and help to guide product development. The integrated team provided technical analysis including the pros/cons of various approaches to the laboratory’s executive team. “It really felt like one team. It was so cohesive,” said the laboratory’s manager of this project.

The team applied SCRUM, an Agile framework, to complete the project in an efficient and timely manner. Paired with a strong product owner from the laboratory who created a prioritized product backlog of what needed to be accomplished, the team worked through the list of tasks to finalize the product in two-week sprints.

Results: 76% Increase in Revenue

IntelliTect provided site design and branding expertise to speed the process of site roll-out. “Our product had looked like it was from the 1990s, but after we added some new features, and gave it a modern face, we were really excited about it and wanted to promote it,” said the project manager.

Once the product site was live, customers were able to receive their laboratory results days sooner because the system allowed for results to be transferred within fifteen minutes of the test’s completion. As a result, there was a 76 percent increase in revenue between the year prior to the update (2014) and the year following the update (2016).

Side benefits of hiring the IntelliTect team included their ability to provide an outsider’s perspective about the use of SCRUM that the lab’s technical department was able to apply during future projects. The project manager was impressed with the way the IntelliTect team lead mentored the laboratory’s interns throughout the project. She believes the guidance given by IntelliTect resulted in considerable growth in the interns’ technical abilities, specifically, their real-world experiences in software development.