Pega Express Phases
Pega Express guides you through the delivery process. Each Minimum Lovable Product release will go through four phases, leveraging platform capabilities to accelerate speed to value.
Discover
Design thinking for fantastic experiences
During Discover, we focus on understanding your desired outcomes, prioritizing which Microjourney(s)™ to deliver first, and getting ready for a project to start. This is designed to accelerate your transformation journey. We start the process by applying design thinking principles to your end-to-end customer journeys, breaking them into smaller pieces called Microjourneys, then focusing on what outcomes to deliver first.
The best practice is to deliver one or two Microjourneys that provide you with the best mix of high-value outcomes, high-volume repeat transactions, and ease of implementation. We decide all of this during Discover, leveraging the power of Pega’s low-code platform to capture what you are building, who for and how, and what information you need. We describe this as the ‘3 pillars’ (Microjourneys, personas/channels and data) which you can directly configure in the Pega Platform.
At Pega we don’t focus on delivering your experience in one high risk release; instead we promote speed to value.
Discover checklist
Prepare
Setting up for success
Prepare is all about getting ready to start the build phase. The delivery team get together for the first time, so this is the opportunity to ensure that the team understands the vision, outcomes, and the plan. The team will work to further understand the Microjourneys™ that form the MLP release (from Discover). If you have not already run a Design Sprint during Discover, this is the time to do it, or, for smaller problem spaces, run shorter ideation sessions to innovate new experiences for end customers. As Prepare evolves, the backlog is refined and prioritized. The definitions of ready and done are agreed, and user stories are created. You will use the Directly Capture Objectives (DCO) discipline to capture outcomes and user stories directly into Pega so you are ready for Sprint 1.
Prepare is a highly collaborative exercise that caters to all project sizes; it can last as little as a few days to three weeks for larger projects. A consistent success factor is having strong and dedicated business representation throughout Prepare and Build.
Prepare checklist
Build
Quick configuration with App Studio
So how will you build your application? The answer is to use Pega platform tools. Pega is a model‑driven, low‑code platform that both professionals and citizen developers can use to configure applications. Platform offers many configuration tools, and you should use them as much as possible; it is built for speed, quality, and upgrade ease. It supports real‑time collaboration between the business and system architects. There are also a number of tools and applications designed for project management, data operations, and creating a great UX for your solution.
This section contains methods and tools to help you follow best practices when building your application. You will have a good starting point; 2 sprints worth of user stories elaborated to the Definition of Ready and a Stages & Steps model, both defined during Prepare.
Build checklist
Adopt
Go live and achieve your goals
Once the build phase is complete, it’s time to go live with your MLP Microjourneys™. Adopt is your go live phase. However, Adopt is much more than simply going live; at Pega, we call this phase Adopt rather than ‘Go Live’ because ensuring your end users adopt the application is critical for achieving your desired outcomes. To do this you not only need to ready the technical parts, but you also need to have a robust business rollout plan that includes a user adoption plan, clear communication and a support framework.
Your release will involve a deployment to production. This may be just one of many go lives in your project, so deployment may be conducted several times. During the lead-up to going live, it is important that you constantly review progress against the Day 1 Live Plan you created during the Prepare phase. This is to ensure that the business will be ready to adopt the application. During Adopt you will plan going live, and you may be completing the migration of data, confirming the release process, planning a handover to business-as-usual, performing a release retrospective and measuring your outcomes. Meanwhile the business will be completing their change management processes.