Agility best practices

This video shows you how to implement Pega best practices for an operating model that works well with Pega Customer Decision Hub™ (CDH). We have developed these best practices based on deep product knowledge and years of delivery experience with clients across the globe. This combination of effective strategies helps clients maximize their CDH implementation.

Given the presence of effective governance and a skilled, streamlined, and scalable organizational structure, we now need to ensure that we have the right processes in place to accelerate time-to-market for customer communications.

 

To manage Business as Usual (BAU) change in CDH, we've put together an approach based on successful implementations across multiple organizations, including large institutions in the banking and telco sectors. Companies that adopt an agile methodology for marketing are best positioned to take advantage of Pega's capabilities. The cyclical process involves capturing, planning, building, deploying, reviewing, and optimizing, which feeds back into capturing new ideas.

Capture/Plan:

• A central team manages the intake and prioritization of requests across the business.
• This centralization ensures a customer-centric focus and easier monitoring and management of 1:1 marketing assets.
• The Capture stage evaluates incoming demand, determines if the BAU team can implement the solution within governance guidelines, and prioritizes the work in a backlog.

Build/Test:

• Prioritized requests are implemented in CDH using an Agile scrum approach.
• Scrum teams pull user stories from the backlog and manage their own work.
• Pega simulations are used to understand the impact of changes and ensure no unexpected outcomes.

Review and Optimize:

• This stage focuses on monitoring the solution's performance and feeding insights back into the cycle.
• Simulations like Value Finder and Scenario Planner help to identify policy changes or new actions that could improve customer conversations.
  

Let's look at a detailed version of the ideal BAU change process, describing where in CDH each stage will be done and by whom, depending on the change type.

Capture Stage:

• Change requests are captured at a high level in 1:1 Operations Manager by business users or NBA analysts.

Refine Stage:

• NBA Analysts refine the request, capturing details in 1:1 Ops Manager.

Plan Stage:

• The NBA Execution Forum prioritizes the request, and the Team Leader allocates it appropriately.

Build and Test Stages:

• Execution Teams create, update, or configure changes and validate them according to acceptance criteria.
• Simple changes are built within 1:1 Ops Manager by NBA Specialists, while complex changes are handled in CDH by NBA Designers or Lead Decisioning Architects.

Complete Stage:

• The Team Leader reviews, approves, and releases individual changes to a revision in 1:1 Ops Manager.

Simulate Stage:

• An NBA Designer reviews and compares an entire revision to production using tools such as Scenario Planner in CDH.

Deploy Stage:

• The Team Leader pushes the revision to production and any required lower environments in CDH.

Report and Analyze:

• NBA Analysts or LDAs review the performance of next best actions against KPIs using CDH tools.
• Data Scientists use Prediction Studio in CDH to monitor predictions and adaptive models.

Discover Stage:

• NBA Analysts use discovery simulations in CDH to identify opportunities for improvement, feeding back into the cycle for future change requests.

To support this process, Pega recommends:

• A suitable environment for Business Operations, such as the Business Operations Environment (BOE).
• Access to good quality production data via a Data migration pipeline.
• A controlled way to plan and make changes using 1:1 Operations Manager.
• Tools to analyze and optimize your decision framework, including simulations and reporting.
• A safe, controlled, and audited way to push changes live through a Business change pipeline.
  

The BOE environment is special because it is a production-level environment designed to provide a space to understand the impact of changes before promoting them to production.

1. Testing: With prod-like data, testing is closer to real-life, using simulations and tests.
2. Supporting different pipelines: Manage the cadence of BAU against project changes safely and easily.
3. Brainstorming ideas: Use simulations to identify customer groups and proactively create new actions.

An example architecture supports different cadences of change from longer-term projects to BAU changes.

• The BOE environment is used for the discover and optimize stages, leading to new BAU change requests.
• BAU changes can be made directly in this environment and promoted to production without disturbing longer-term project changes.
  

1:1 Operations Manager is a change management module inside CDH that guides users through the end-to-end process for creating new actions or making adjustments to existing next-best-action strategies. It allows for agile, streamlined changes without needing highly technical resources.

 

Value Finder is a discovery tool that identifies opportunities to optimize the engagement framework by simulating next best action selection for all customers in a sample. It helps identify under-served customers and suggests ways to improve engagement with them.

 

Scenario Planner is a discovery and testing tool that helps you understand the performance of decision frameworks. It allows for the comparison of simulation results to real outcomes, predicting the impact of changes on KPIs.

 

Audience simulation tests the configuration of engagement policies against a simulated audience, helping to identify mistakes and understand the impact of policy decisions. It is particularly useful for stakeholders transitioning from traditional marketing approaches to 1:1 customer engagement.

 

Distribution tests help you understand the distribution of actions across a customer base, visualizing the reach and spread of actions. It is useful for understanding the impact of changes and ensuring that you get the right reach.

 

The ethical bias check tool tests for unwanted bias in engagement frameworks, ensuring balanced and ethical outcomes. It provides simple reports and proactive alerts to address any detected bias.

You have reached the end of this video. What did it show you?

• Overview of Pega best practices for an operating model with CDH.
• Importance of effective governance, efficient implementation, and incredible agility.
• Detailed BAU change process in CDH.
• Tools and features supporting agile business operations.
• Use of the Business Operations Environment for testing, supporting different pipelines, and brainstorming ideas.
• Role of 1:1 Operations Manager in facilitating agile change.
• Value Finder, Scenario Planner, Audience Simulation, Distribution Tests, and Ethical Bias Check tools.