Targetprocess product workshops at Caterpillar Inc.

Caterpillar Inc., the world's leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, has been managing software development projects with Targetprocess since 2012.

While Targetprocess is used nowadays by 1400 Caterpillar employees the company was willing to help employees uncover the full potential of Targetprocess for their specific roles as well as to understand how Targetprocess can be used to more effectively manage agile projects at both the team, project and portfolio level.

Well in advance of the workshops users were offered to fill in a questionnaire so that our Product Specialist could adjust the agenda and make the workshops relevant and time-efficient. This resulted in a fully booked agenda for 5 working days at the headquarters of Caterpillar in Illinois, US.

There has been a lot of interest in the following topics:
- Agile project portfolio management
- Release management
- Request management
- QA and test management with Targetprocess
- People management
- Time management
- How to generate basic & advanced reports
- How to set up custom dashboards
- Mashups & plugins
- Creation of custom views
- Upcoming features of Targetprocess

To attract more employees to the workshops posters like the one below were displayed on TV screens around the customer office. The posters were provided with the QR code to simplify the registration via a smartphone.

During most of the workshop sessions people worked in groups of 5. Every workshop included tasks with examples from real project situations. Often we started with some hands-on exercises using sticky notes and paper and when basic terms and ideas were clear we proceeded to more complex tasks in Targetprocess. Here are examples of tasks for creation of views and for generation of reports.

Some photos from the workshop sessions:

After every session people left their feedback.

One of the very important sessions for Caterpillar teams was how Targetprocess can help with agile project portfolio management. Our Product Specialist was happy to demonstrate the upcoming version of Targetprocess which should support complex custom processes and workflows of Caterpillar and enable users to:
- map requirements and track dependencies across multiple teams
- visualize team workflows and track the progress of multiple teams
- see if the deadlines set on a higher level are being met
- track progress through verticals
- prioritise work across the entire organization

In general, we should say it was a very challenging and exciting week. At the end of the workshop week the customer decided that such workshops should be held in other locations of Caterpillar as well.

Upon return our Product Specialist concluded her internal post sharing the new knowledge with our team with the following words: “How awesome and inspiring our customers are! I am so happy to work with them!”

If your company uses Targetprocess and you would also like to derive more value from the software as well as to boost productivity of your agile teams, feel free to request an onsite workshop. If you would like to customize the agenda, duration and other details, please contact your Targetprocess Product Specialist.