Taylor & Francis Group Case Study

The Client

About Taylor & Francis

One of the leading brands in academic publishing, Taylor & Francis (T&F) publishes over 2,600 journals and 5,000 new books each year.

With a backlist of over 140,000 titles available in print and online, technology is business critical for the organisation.

So, T&F set out to reorganise its 90-strong technology team and move from outdated delivery approaches to a faster Agile way of working.

The challenge

Understanding the skills gap

However, as T&F soon discovered, moving to Agile is rarely easy.

While they were following some practices, T&F were struggling to see real value or impact. To fully understand their internal digital skills gap, and unlock more value from Agile, they realised it was time to get help.

What T&F needed was a player-coach: a partner who understood Agile by the book and in practice - time for AND Digital to step in.

Through in-depth workshops, our learning and development specialists and Agile coaches helped T&F map out their learning needs.

We also analysed T&F’s current learning environment to understand company perceptions around upskilling, as well as preferred learning styles.

Building bootcamp

Once the organisation’s requirements were fully articulated, AND worked with senior stakeholders and T&F’s global teams to build a bespoke bootcamp that:

Brought Agile to life
Provided fresh, inspiring learning across all levels of the organisation.
Was memorable, with learning experiences that were practical, so attendees could recall and apply their learnings easily
Lay the foundation for a stronger culture of learning, so attendees would continue to share knowledge and engage in relevant Communities of Practice

Once the learning framework for the bootcamp was agreed, we delivered three initial experiences for T&F: two in the UK, and one in Miami.

Before T&F rolled out the bootcamp, we first assessed its impactfulness using survey feedback to further refine the content.

Following on from the success of the bespoke bootcamp, AND digitals' partnership with T&F continued, with the development of a T&F academy - an initiative designed to make Agile training available on a global scale.

Key Outcomes

As a result of the work we delivered with Taylor & Francis:

The T&F Agile Bootcamp is now compulsory for its 90-strong technology department.
Their team has developed a breadth of skills, including Scrum Master training, facilitation skills and software development practices.
T&F has access to an interactive Confluence page that offers bootcamp materials, tech discussions and resource sharing.
Their tech recruitment has benefitted, as they can share their knowledge on modern engineering practices and Agile expertise.
The partnership with AND Digital continues, as together, we develop the T&F Academy - an initiative designed to make training available on a global scale.