Quick time to value, increased ROI, and meeting rapidly changing business requirements place a new set of demands on project teams implementing cloud solutions. While in the past classic “waterfall” project plans were successful, it is increasingly rare that project teams can conduct extended design, construct, and test phases. New business strategies, changes in the world of work, and the speed of technical change have transformed project timelines from years, to months, to weeks, and sometimes to days. Saba’s Expertise@Work project approach recognizes this reality and offers a practical, hands-on implementation methodology with an iterative Agile methodology that incorporates Lean principles to allow you to configure and adapt your solution based on what you really need and account for changing requirements and priorities. Our focus is on quickly and simply establishing your baseline Saba system and then configuring and deploying essential functionality to support your immediate business cases through iterative “sprints” where requirements, design, and validation occur in a collaborative environment.

1. White Paper
Expertise@Work: An Agile Project Methodology
Everything you need,
when you need it.

2. White Paper
n
Expertise@Work
An Agile Project Methodology
Quick time to value, increased ROI, and meeting rapidly
changing business requirements place a new set of demands
on project teams implementing cloud solutions. While in the
past classic “waterfall” project plans were successful, it is
increasingly rare that project teams can conduct extended
design, construct, and test phases. New business strategies,
changes in the world of work, and the speed of technical
change have transformed project timelines from years, to
months, to weeks, and sometimes to days.
Saba’s Expertise@Work project approach recognizes this
reality and offers a practical, hands-on implementation
methodology with an iterative Agile methodology that
incorporates Lean principles to allow you to configure
and adapt your solution based on what you really need
and account for changing requirements and priorities. Our
focus is on quickly and simply establishing your baseline
Saba system and then configuring and deploying essential
functionality to support your immediate business cases
through iterative “sprints” where requirements, design,
and validation occur in a collaborative environment.
Project durations are between four and eight weeks
depending on the immediate use cases needed, and
our methodology delivers results efficiently, quickly
and with better end-user engagement and visibility.
As a result, Saba customers can be up and running
with Saba within weeks, start achieving urgent business
opportunities, enable their employees with the industry’s
most innovative people development platform, and measure
ROI quickly. The lessons learned and ROI gained from this
quick deployment then can allow for rapid expansion when
the customer is ready to deploy other components of the
Saba talent management solution, through another sprint
or series of sprints.
Lean and Agile? What’s That All About?
Lean and Agile are two different methodologies that are
used extensively in business. The Lean business approach
is derived from the production processes adopted by Toyota
after World War II. It focuses on a demand-driven approach
with an emphasis on:
ƒƒ Building only what is needed
ƒƒ Eliminating anything that does not add value
The Agile approach is focused on the notion that solutions
and software should be developed in small iterations with
frequent releases, as requirements cannot be accurately
articulated up front so instead need to be collaboratively
defined. Agile implementation processes involve configuring
software in small segments, testing those segments, and
then getting end-user feedback. These so called “sprints”
aim to create a rapid feedback loop between the project
team and the actual users.
For the past few years, software development experts have
been conversing more and more in a language that combines
elements from both Lean and Agile methodologies. This
combination offers a comprehensive and process-oriented
approach toward software development.
What? No Waterfall?
Since its inception in 1970s, the waterfall approach has
been successfully used to implement software. It involves a
linear and sequential project approach where understanding
customer requirements is the first stage, followed by design
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3. Agile Methodology
Value
Value
Waterfall Methodology
Time
Time
Value Delivered
or construct phases, and finally testing of the configured
application just prior to go-live.
Although successful, the approach has drawbacks that
are particularly apparent in the new business and technical
paradigm that clients face. The waterfall method deploys an
upfront requirement-gathering and design approach, which
assumes that the end-users know these things and leaves all
the design work and verification to late stages in the project.
This is often a fallacy as many end-users cannot clearly
articulate requirements and often struggle to determine the
best way to map their needs into a new software application
because they don’t know what the system can really do. This
leads to poor design decisions that are often not uncovered
until a later test phase, or in a worst case, post go-live. As a
result, while the overall delivered value should be high, the
risk of failure due to changed requirements or poor design
decision is also very high. Couple this with the Saba Cloud
focus on rapid and regular updates to service functionality
and it quickly becomes apparent that a waterfall approach
Risk of Failure
where there can often be a significant lag between
design and test is no longer the most efficient means
of managing implementation.
Saba’s Lean Agile implementation approach, on the
other hand, does not assume that all requirements are
known upfront. The approach focuses on discovery of
requirements through a collaborative design process
whereby Saba Cloud features are configured in an
interactive environment. This allows both the users and
project team members to experiment and iterate, and
allows new features to be quickly adapted into a design
framework. It consciously focuses on “must have”
features to drive rapid, multiphase implementations
rather than lengthy projects that run the risk of becoming
obsolete before even going live. As a result, greater
value is delivered over time while changes due to shifts
in business requirements or end-user feedback can be
easily made, thus dramatically reducing the risk of failure
while boosting the customer’s ROI.
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4. White Paper
n
Expertise@Work
Saba Expertise@Work Project Approach
and Saba Cloud
We have taken the best of Lean and Agile methodologies
and incorporated them into our process:
ƒƒ Only enable what is needed for the customer’s
immediate goals
ƒƒ Collaboratively define requirements
ƒƒ Rapidly enable and test
This approach is designed to complement Saba Cloud and
in unison rapidly deliver application functionality whenever
and to whatever extent it is needed.
Our approach focuses on Lean principles in only building
what is needed and delivers results through agile sprints
in four-, six-, or eight-week projects (depending on the
extent of Saba Cloud application functionality you are
looking to deploy).
The implementation provides a thin layer of project
coordination focused on building and enabling a
collaborative environment between project teams and
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end-users rather than focusing on waterfall phases and
sign-offs that elevate the project management load.
This approach:
ƒƒ Breaks projects down into rapid four- to eight-week projects
focused on key business needs with rapid sprints of
requirements, design, and validation
ƒƒ Comes with Saba Expertise Manager – your unique single
point of contact
ƒƒ Drives collaboration between team members and users who
are considered integral parts of design decisions rather than
a testing afterthought
ƒƒ Guarantees user feedback on every task of the project
ƒƒ Eliminates lag in feedback, thus reducing the probability
of misstated or misunderstood requirements
ƒƒ Allows for changes due to shifts in business needs
or market dynamics
The net outcomes, we believe, are reduced time and effort
to deploy and increased end-user satisfaction.

5. Expertise Manager — Unique to Saba
Key to making the Expertise@Work experience a delightful
customer experience is the Expertise Manager, your
Expertise@Work single point of contact. Together you will
refine your talent management roadmap and prioritize your
needs — whether you are adding new features, optimizing
existing usage, or expanding to new sets of users.
If you want to learn more about Saba’s
innovative Expertise@Work project
approach, visit www.saba.com/services
or contact your Saba representative to
request a meeting.
The Expertise Manager will bring in the resources from
across Saba to help you in the following areas:
ƒƒ Success@Work: Our implementation services, focused on
making you successful
ƒƒ Support@Work: A broad range of support services, from
our online “How Do I” library and customer community to
end-user support and Adoption Acceleration services
ƒƒ Training@Work: A list of on-demand or live training
resources for end-users and administrators
ƒƒ Strategy@Work: Extensive planning and optimization
services for our most demanding customers
ƒƒ Manage@Work: Let Saba experts manage your
Saba service for you
Saba enables organizations to build a transformative workplace where they can leverage their people
networks to become more competitive through innovation, speed, agility, and trust.
© 2013 Saba Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Saba, the Saba logo, and the marks relating to Saba products and services referenced herein are either trademarks or registered trademarks of
Saba Software, Inc. or its affiliates. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Saba | 2400 Bridge Parkway | Redwood Shores | CA 94065-1166 USA | (+1) 877.SABA.101 or (+1) 650.779.2791 | www.saba.com
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