Case study · Mining & Resources
One view of delivery for a multinational engineering project
Rio Tinto's AutoHaul team shared project documents by email. Interfuze customised Jira so the team and its international partners can plan, prioritise and see the whole delivery process in one place, with reporting in Power BI.
Outcomes
- One plan to plan, prioritise and visualise work across the whole AutoHaul delivery process
- Real time project data flowing from Jira into Power BI reporting
The challenge
Rio Tinto manages AutoHaul in partnership with Hitachi STS. It is an automated heavy-haul, long-distance rail network: 2.4 km automated trains, fitted with safety and surveillance technology, carry iron ore across the Pilbara. The project's stakeholders reach beyond the two partners to Europe, Asia and America.
The AutoHaul team was refining its project management and had identified Jira as a way to improve visibility and efficiency. Documents were shared and managed by email.
The team needed Jira's planning and management tools to give internal team members and external stakeholders visibility, to bring the work of Hitachi and Rio Tinto together inside the project, and to give the team better, more reliable information for decisions.
Our approach
We reviewed how AutoHaul managed delivery and its whole engineering workflow, then advised on and customised Jira to fit. Much of the work did not use Jira in its traditional agile sense. It used Jira's workflow and visualisation features as a fast, cost-effective, all-in-one answer to the team's varied needs.
We modelled all of the project's business objects and their relationships as custom Jira issue types, which moved most of the work out of emails and into a single system. Jira Plans gives an overview of delivery from the initial request to the release of each feature, and Jira dashboards work alongside Power BI to present the information that matters to key stakeholders.
The phases ran as weekly sprints with daily stand-ups, so each solution arrived quickly and met the business requirements. Training in Jira and in AutoHaul's own processes helped the team adapt quickly and take ownership of the tool.
The outcome
Custom Jira Plans let the team plan, prioritise and visualise work across the whole AutoHaul delivery process, in one place.
Less information is lost now that work has moved out of email, and it is more visible than before through Jira dashboards.
The new tools prompted decisions on accountability, resource management and approval control, which have improved the team's delivery process further.
“The partnership between Interfuze and AutoHaul was great. We were able to move away from emails and Excel to a highly visible workflow and planning roadmap that has made things more efficient and easier to manage. This then flowed to PowerBI reporting with real time data.”
Where to next
Related work
The partner
- Atlassian at Interfuze Licensing, Cloud migrations, upgrades, training and support