Pathfinder Examples
Pathfinder # 1 - Metropolitan Area Network Service
A small team of five, implemented the pathfinder at 20 sites for the Service Provider to test and validate the theoretical value proposition & business case financials. The Value Proposition estimated that the service would offer 100:1 price performance over competitive offerings. The initial pathfinder validated the business case financials and the value proposition.
Over three years the team grew the business via a number of small iterations, from $0/month to over $800,000 per month run rate revenue. ($9.6M annual). Service levels of 99.9% availability and two-week provisioning time. This was achieved in a Public Sector environment. Today this network forms the high-speed backbone network for a large public sector organization.
Pathfinder # 2 - National Telepresence Service
The initiative started with a national level business case recommending the need for 115 Telepresence Rooms nationally to service this large public sector organization. An initial small pathfinder was to be implemented in 90 days at just 15 rooms nationally in order to test, validate the assumptions, risks, dependencies and constraints, and benefits outlined in the business case and to discover any other unknowns. An Executive Team meeting was scheduled for 90 days out from the start of the Pathfinder.
The Executive Meeting was held exactly 90 days from the start of the Pathfinder. Indication in the business case about the dependency of a shared calendaring system and physical site access were validated as the scaled version of the service was intended to be shared across multiple organizations.
Pathfinder # 3 - Budgetary Tracking System
The application was designed for Financial Administrator to manage on-going expenditure against budget and to consolidate tracking and reporting across the Enterprise and up to the CFO on a monthly basis.
A small enabled team of developers and a Product Owner with constant engagement from the User (Financial Administrator) enabled the team to quickly understand the requirements, develop the foundational components of the service, and put it into production in the first 90 days.
The team was able to bypass the traditional excessive time and effort in the initial planning and estimation phase, using early implementations as a "discovery" to validate estimates, mitigate risks, and establish value early.