Project Background
Burns & McDonnell's BMCDigital delivery organization is preparing a 16-week release of a client-facing project controls and reporting capability used by EPC project managers across energy and transmission programs. You are the Engineering Manager for a 10-person cross-functional team that has missed 2 of the last 4 sprint commitments, and internal stakeholders are concerned that the team is not learning fast enough from delivery issues.
The release is important because two strategic clients have requested the new reporting workflow before the next capital planning cycle, and the Operations Director wants more predictable execution without slowing delivery. You need to show how you would build continuous improvement into the team's operating model while still delivering the release on time.
Key Stakeholders
Key stakeholders include the BMCDigital Product Manager, the Operations Director, the QA lead, and a Transmission & Distribution business sponsor. Their priorities conflict: Product wants scope stability, Operations wants predictability and better team health, QA wants fewer escaped defects, and the business sponsor wants an early pilot even if some lower-priority workflow improvements slip.
Constraints
- Timeline: 16 weeks, with a pilot expected by Week 10
- Team: 6 engineers, 2 QA engineers, 1 UX designer, 1 product manager
- Budget: $120,000 remaining for contractors, tooling, and test automation support
- Dependencies: 2 integrations with the Burns & McDonnell data platform team and 1 security review by corporate IT
- Current baseline: sprint predictability is 62%, escaped defect rate is 9 per release, and average cycle time is 11 days
Complications
- One senior engineer is allocated 40% to a production support effort for another internal platform.
- The data platform team has already signaled a possible 2-week delay on one API needed for the pilot.
- Team retrospectives have been inconsistent, and prior action items were not tracked to completion.
Your Task
- Build a 16-week execution plan that improves how the team works while protecting the release date.
- Define the operating cadence, metrics, and feedback loops you would use to drive continuous improvement.
- Explain what trade-offs you would make if the pilot deadline and process-improvement work come into conflict.
- Identify the top risks to both delivery and team improvement, and how you would mitigate them.
- Specify how you would know the team is actually improving by the end of the release.
