Organization Overview
Industry: Global PharmaceuticalsRevenue: $50+ billionEmployees: 100,000+
*Astria is a pseudonym case profile.
Astria* is a global pharmaceuticals company whose CoE is managed by IT and provides application development and delivery services to distributed business lines. Their CoE resources work closely with a pool of preferred partners, allowing the team to influence outcomes across a portfolio of projects.
Astria began their Appian Journey with small projects, the success of which helped build confidence across business partners for future investment. Soon other business units started using Appian for their own, independent project.
By 2018, the Astria was working with multiple external partners on Appian projects and “needed a central group to support those applications”, says the IT Manager and CoE Lead. “While our CoE initially had a limited focus on application support, we realized the benefit of a more centralized group coordinating between the partners that do Appian development and our internal business units.”
“Over the past year, we’ve shifted our approach from one of support to become more of a delivery services provider, advising business partners on potential projects, coordinating delivery with partners, and sharing knowledge across internal and external teams. Like an external services provider, we are funded via project costs ultimately billed back to the business.”
In the future, Astria wants the CoE to expand its delivery services offerings to more effectively scale as partners take on a greater number of projects. They also want to increase speed by working with other teams on automation initiatives such as RPA, IDP and AI.
The CoE has 8 total FTEs, works with four external development and delivery partners with 70+ individuals on those teams. They also work directly with business partners and support over 15 applications. In the near future, they would like to double their team’s resources and further invest in functional stability (governance) to more effectively support Appian initiatives across the business. “All our funding comes from the delivery of projects, so it’s hard to justify spending on foundational group capabilities that are necessary for our group to scale effectively."
“Developing good talent and building out the base of skills in a team can be a challenge, but is something you can’t skimp on. Having a team with a blended skillset has helped us accelerate development with partners."
Current roles on the team include: architects, scrum masters, developers, testers and a contracting/licensing expert. The goal is to embed delivery expertise into distributed projects and fully map against SDLC needs - ecosystem, platform and development experts that can guide both business partners and delivery teams end-to-end.
The CoE works with business units to scope projects based on business needs. They also assess fit with Appian and recommend potential delivery options back to business partners.
The CoE ensures partners develop and deploy applications according to the company’s specific requirements. They will periodically conduct partner audits to ensure appropriate oversight and will also manage relevant contracts and licenses.
For the most part, the CoE does not directly support applications after they are built. Instead, they provide advisory services to lines of business about how to effectively manage and maintain those applications. For example, the CoE team often advises on application enhancement requests.
PDF