How agile is helping increase Scotland's biodiversity

Session type:

Case Study

Presented by:

Paul Main

NatureScot

Donald Fraser

NatureScot

Mark Kiehlmann

Calba

Session time:

27 Sep 11:15 — 12:00

Session duration:

45 minutes

About the session

Scotland's biodiversity has been massively impacted for many years by an overpopulation of deer. Going forward, rigorous deer management (culling) is essential to get the deer population down to levels that will allow Scotland's nature to thrive.

NatureScot, working with Deer management groups, has the responsibility for making this happen. This whole initiative was put at risk when their deer management system, Deerline, managed by a 3rd party, was announced to be decommissioned (shutdown) by March 2024.

Hear from NatureScot’s wildlife management team about the work they do with deer management and how they switched tools to learn about agile and develop a new digital service. You will learn about biodiversity and their agile journey, “oh dear” moments included!

NOTE: It’s Scotland's Climate Week 25 Sep to 1 Oct, coinciding with LAS. During this week NatureScot will be highlighting the work we’re doing to protect and restore Scotland’s nature, because without nature there is no climate. Learn more about how we're helping nature adapt to climate change https://orlo.uk/RibUl #ClimateNeedsNature

Participant takeaways:

Learn about Scotland’s biodiversity, how overpopulation of deer are impacting it, and the work NatureScot are doing to protect and restore it
How agile and digital services are contributing towards improving Scotland’s biodiversity
Forming an agile team from scratch, with non-technical specialists, and upskilling them to deliver a new digital service against a hard deadline
This includes integrating junior developers (from CodeClan) into a new team
How creativity, collaboration and empowerment can be harnessed to solve biodiversity and technical issues and help evolve innovated solutions to current and future complex problems.

Themes:

Biodiversity, Transformation, Creativity, Courage, Upskilling

About the speaker(s)

Paul Main

Paul is a Deer Policy Officer with NatureScot and has been the ‘defacto’ product owner for the new Deer Online Service developed by NatureScot to support the management of Scotland’s Deer population.

Previous to NatureScot, completely differently, Paul worked as an accountant in various sectors over thirty five years, moving from practice, to production, Trade Unions, publishing, wine and finally in the oil industry, mainly in Central London. As a Financial Controller he has wide experience of implementing systems designed to maximise efficiency and profit. During this time he also spent time on the Board of Luton International Airport at the time when Easyjet were lured there which has subsequently transformed the business.

Plans to retire to the Highlands and stack shelves part time and explore the mountains in his spare time were put in abeyance when the pandemic struck and he utilised the extra time saved by not commuting for 3 hours a day to study for a Masters in Sustainable Mountain Development with a particular specialism in deer management. He now lives in the Highlands, working for NatureScot.

Pronouns: He / Him

Donald Fraser

Donald is the Head of Wildlife Management for NatureScot. He has over 20 years’ experience with deer management and was previously with the Deer Commission for Scotland before it was joined with NatureScot.

Today he has responsibility for wildlife management of over 90 different species ranging from Deer to Great Crested Newts and everything in between, including birds.

Also activities such as Muirburn and Grouse Moor. Donald is leading the digital transformation of wildlife management services at NatureScot to ensure they provide efficiencies for the public and NatureScot, and contribute to helping protect and restore Scotland’s biodiversity.

Pronouns: he/him/his

Mark Kiehlmann

Mark has been around software teams since the ‘90’s and witnessed the evolution from rapid application development, through the agile manifesto and the number of methodologies and frameworks around Lean and Agile delivery.

He brings a wealth of experience from the private FinTech sector, with more than a decade in the social impact sector focusing on the positive impact for people and the planet and latterly in the public sector too.

Mark’s roles have included programming, analysis, team leader and latterly is motivated to coach others in their continuous improvement journey, be that professionally, or personally as a British Cycling Mountain bike coach.

LinkedIn

Pronouns: He/Him