Supporting Agile product development

Cancer Research UK has an ambitious strategy which aims to see 3 out of 4 of people survive cancer within the next 20 years. To this end they’ve radically transformed and grown their digital department, and have sought out agencies that can help them improve their ways of working.

What we did

We’ve helped CRUK in numerous ways. We’ve provided certified Agile training for ScrumMasters and Product Owners. We’ve helped improve awareness of Agile in other parts of the organisation through training and workshops. And we’ve worked with them to create a coaching backlog and set up a process to continuously improve their Agile methods.

Race for Life product development

Race for Life is the nation’s biggest women-only fundraising event: the website serves over half a million participants each year. The continued and growing success of the product means that the season is now longer and the platform needs to be available more. The demands of maintaining such a popular site, coupled with an irregular release cycle, meant that the team was struggling to find capacity to innovate around the product.

We helped the team move over to a regular release cycle with Agile development teams feeding new features into each release. This has allowed digital production to trial new events like Twilight and Pretty Muddy as well as features like early registration and split-testing of landing pages.

Stand up to Cancer technical lead

Stand Up To Cancer, run in partnership with Channel 4 and the Entertainment Industry Foundation, raises money for translational cancer research through organised fundraising activities and a night of live television in October.

Manifesto was technical lead for the first year of Stand Up To Cancer, including collaborating to source all digital platforms. It became the most successful charity fundraiser on UK commercial TV, raising over £8 million. In year 2 we updated the Stand Up To Cancer Drupal website to provide an improved user experience and donation journey, and to capture supporter details.

How it went

Our relationship with Cancer Research UK continues to grow and develop to the point where we took on an interim role as leader in the IT team to help guide them through a restructure. We’ve also taken on a role helping them improve their technical Agile processes so that they can release more often without compromising on quality.

What this means for your project

Our consultancy services are tailored to help identify and overcome the obstacles that stand between you and successful digital innovation. We join the dots between the opportunities presented by technology and the changing needs and expectations of your audiences, to help you achieve your strategic objectives.