Pearson's Successmaker: Putting the Customer First in Transforming Product Development Processes

Pearson Plc is an education company that operates worldwide, with headquarters in London, England. Its six primary business units are North American Education, International Education, Professional, The Financial Times, Interactive Data, and Penguin Publishing. The vice president of product management within the Digital Learning division of the North American Education unit based in Chandler, Arizona, begins to transform the product development processes to better meet the needs of his customers in the education market, specifically in transitioning from using an off-shored Waterfall software development model to an on-shore Agile model.



When the vice president first joined Pearson a year earlier, the Digital Learning unit had spent significant resources developing a major upgrade for one of its educational software products. The first version of this new product was challenged by the disconnect between what the software development group was delivering and what the vice president’s customers desired. He is now faced with a decision to continue focusing on the specific methodology the group had implemented (Scrum) or move to a new one (Kanban). Additionally, he has to consider expanding his focus to help drive Agile methodologies both with other groups in his business unit and outside his business unit. These decisions must be made at a potentially critical time for his products as his organization deals with the growing pains associated with the shift to Agile.