HOW WE DO IT - Case Studies

Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. 

Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) is a Class 1 North American railway, providing freight transportation services over a 14,000-mile network in Canada and the United States. Based in Calgary, Alberta, CPR has been connecting Canadian businesses and consumers to the world since 1881.
 
CPR's technical department, Information Services (IS), decided to adopt a more iterative project management approach for software application development that would see progress, quality and results achieved in a timely manner. Faced with the task of converting and deploying multiple systems to Microsoft .NET, CPR IS wanted to ensure that quality and consistency in its applications and infrastructure were maintained as it made this migration. With a goal of making a smooth and effective transition to a more agile project management approach for their .NET initiatives, CPR enlisted Quadrus to provide the required training to meet their needs.

A structured, hands-on training and mentorship approach was necessary to transition to these new processes as smoothly and risk-free as possible. CPR engaged Quadrus for a variety of training courses which covered such topics as OOA&D, .NET, ASP.NET and VB.NET for its internal team. In addition, CPR IS Project Managers and Leads underwent Managing Iterative Projects (MIP) training courses to gain a comprehensive understanding of RUP and iterative project management topics. A series of private training sessions were held onsite at Quadrus where the group created iterative project plans, prioritized project requirements, and learned a range of project management approaches, techniques, deliverables and best practices.

Quadrus also provided CPR IS with custom mentoring services to enable project managers to put into practice those skills learned in the classroom. Quadrus and CPR IS worked closely together on risk assessment, creating iteration plans, prioritizing use cases, and introducing collaborative development practices. This allowed the real-world difficulties of implementing new approaches to be quickly overcome by applying proven solutions and avoidance of common pitfalls. Quadrus provided sample deliverables to speed up the learning cycle such as project plans, risk profiling tools, and project reporting templates. These sample deliverables were created using CPR's actual project data and made concepts more realistic and applicable for the project managers.