ARMAKUNI LIMITED

Armakuni Product Management Service

Armakuni product managers work to define a strategic product vision and manage the end-to-end product lifecycle. We are outcome focussed and use evidence-based decision-making to align user needs & business objectives into a cohesive product strategy. ​​We work to foster cross-functional collaboration, ensuring customer-centred value is delivered at pace.

Features

• Product strategy definition, in-line with user needs & organisational goals
• Define, align stakeholders on and communicate vision across all levels
• Collaboratively define WoW to promote healthy team dynamics & culture
• Use best-practice tools and techniques throughout the full Product Lifecycle
• Establish fast & frequent feedback loops to maximise learning
• Data-driven, incremental delivery of customer value
• Collaborative roadmap reviews and checkpoints
• Define and track success metrics
• Build a sustainable product management function through 1-1 coaching
• Support transition from Project to Product mindset

Benefits

• Teams upskilled in product management best practice
• Teams/stakeholders aligned around clear vision and focussed on goals
• Products meet customer needs; deliver benefits aligned to business objectives
• Focus on outcomes with clear measures of success
• Products are managed end to end, and continuously improved
• Informed decision-making based on data-driven insight generation
• Focus on increased speed-to-market to deliver value more rapidly
• Empowered teams, set up for joyful and successful collaboration
• Fosters a positive team culture and empowerment within teams
• Enhanced collaborative learning and development

£225 to £1,900 a unit a day

• Education pricing available

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at accounts@armakuni.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 14

Service ID

372042891683967

Contact

Maryana Berezdetska
02074594330
accounts@armakuni.com

Planning

• Planning service: Yes
• How the planning service works: All AK consultants are lean/agile experts. Our services are sensitive to the context within which we find ourselves operating and tailored to the client’s needs. We start by conducting a short, time-bound Discovery phase. This enables us to get a clear understanding of the user, business and technical aspects of the project and ensures the development of a shared understanding, as well as agreement on vision and objectives across a broad stakeholder group. It will ultimately support the ongoing iterative planning phases. Outputs usually include product vision, roadmap, a prioritised backlog of user stories, technical constraints and RAID Log.
• Planning service works with specific services: Yes
• Hosting or software services the planning service works with:
  • GCP (Partner)
  • AWS (Partner)
  • Azure (Partner)
  • Any container based platform
  • Any Kubernetes installation
  • VMWare Platforms
  • PaaS - CloudFoundry, Openshift
  • CaaS - Containers As A Service
  • Serverless

Training

• Training service provided: Yes
• How the training service works: Our consultants aim to build a sustainable, long term product management capability in your organisation through coaching and pairing, throughout your migration to modern cloud-based products and services. By embedding our people within client teams, we build trust, share learnings and upskill in product management best practice & lean/agile WoW. We are passionate about continuous, applied learning - via practical collaboration & experimentation during all phases of the product lifecycle. We recognise that every organisation is different and there is no “one size to fit all”, so we tailor our practices to address the needs of the organisation, team and individual.
• Training is tied to specific services: No

Setup and migration

• Setup or migration service available: Yes
• How the setup or migration service works: AK provide a cloud services assessment and work with you to design the most appropriate method based on your circumstances (eg on premise to cloud, between cloud services). AK would consider application, data type, costs and your chosen cloud service in this assessment. We have experience with CloudMigrator, AWS toolsets and RaceMI.
• Setup or migration service is for specific cloud services: No

Quality assurance and performance testing

• Quality assurance and performance testing service: Yes
• How the quality assurance and performance testing works: AK will work with your organisation to ensure that all business, technical and performance requirements are clearly understood and will develop appropriate approaches to confirm that requirements have been met.

Security testing

• Security services: Yes
• Security services type: Other
• Other security services:
  • Automation of security services/practices
  • Implement security testing into CI/CD pipelines
  • Continuous Governance

Ongoing support

• Ongoing support service: No

Service scope

• Service constraints: The Armakuni range of services is about ""enabling"" our clients. We help clients build HIGH PERFORMANCE TEAMS.; This necessitates a range of different approaches.; But DO NOT:; * Provide support services (but we might provide coaching services); * Provide CTO services (but we might run workshops to influence and drive decisions); ; Other constraints are currently unknown

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: No
• Phone support: No
• Web chat support: No
• Support levels: Armakuni provide engineers and consultants to support change and transformation - our aim is to enable our clients to be able to support themselves.; In this capacity, we do not provide a production level out of hours support service, however we do provide support contacts during working hours.; We can, if required provide some levels of support/drawdown consultancy for our engineering coaches, but this is not a commercial software support agreement.

Resellers

• Supplier type: Not a reseller

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Conforms to BS7858:2019
• Government security clearance: Up to Security Clearance (SC)

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: No
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: No
• Cyber essentials: Yes
• Cyber essentials plus: Yes
• Other security certifications: No

Social Value

• Social Value:

  Social Value

  • Fighting climate change
  • Covid-19 recovery
  • Tackling economic inequality
  • Equal opportunity
  • Wellbeing

  Fighting climate change

  Armakuni has partnered with Positive Planet a leading external consultancy to assist us on our Net Zero journey, Positive Planet are helping Armakuni to better understand our carbon emissions and how to reduce them using informed carbon reduction strategies. We have already calculated our carbon footprint for 2021. Using this data we have developed government compliant carbon reduction plan with clear targets and commitments. We have already certified as Carbon Neutral and we aim to certify as a Net Zero company by 2030 at the latest. Our carbon analysis extends beyond the requirements to be transparent and is publically shared (https://positiveplanet.uk/company-dashboards/armakuni/#), the analysis will be increasingly more detailed over the coming years. Our journey will be under continued review internally and externally to ensure we hit our targets. ; Our client engagements are focused on efficient use of resources, we achieve this in three ways. In our deliveries we ensure instances are automatically scaled according to demand, many of our engagements involve rearchitecting services to be cloud-native (using containers and “serverless” technologies maximises the resharing of resources, eliminating wasted server time and thus minimising the carbon footprint of applications). Finally, we maximise the use of reserved instances which are more efficient than on demand resources.

  Covid-19 recovery

  Armakuni was founded by a team working at Comic Relief and as such the organisation has always had a strong people focus. Armakuni has well established processes to support the physical and mental wellbeing of employees through a range of services including BUPA, virtual GP Appointments, Employee Assistance and Mental Health Support via Spill. These services and policies such as "remote first working" help to support our people and reduce the demand on public services. Central to our engagement approach is the focus on transferring knowledge, re-skilling and uplifting the capability of the retained teams within our clients. This increasingly relates to the re-skilling of teams whose focus has been legacy technology (on-prem, COTS, waterfall) to modern cloud-native, open-source and agile ways of working. We also partner with leading training organisations to support the recruitment of under represented groups into highly attractive technology engineering jobs, this includes CodeUntapped, Bright Network and QA. We supported the Welsh Government's Covid-19 response and recovery by building a strategic Data Visualisation Platform that allowed Ministers, Civil Servants, Clinicians and Public Health professionals to have all the relevant data instantly available and shareable to drive timely and improved decision making. One of the services we built with the Welsh Government allowed policy makers to model the impact of various policy decisions on the spread of Covid through the Welsh population, to drive strategic response to the pandemic (described here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTWmeJXe9vg). All services for this engagement were procured through GCloud and Armakuni gave a significant discount against our published SFIA rate card. As a remote first employer, our people were able to maintain bubbles and safe distancing by working from home. Now restrictions are lifted we encourage our people to only travel when necessary.

  Tackling economic inequality

  We partner with Code Untapped whose mission is to empower the underrepresented community to fulfil their potential through increasing diversity in technology. They provide a platform to help people from under-represented communities develop their technical skills, instil in them an entrepreneurial spirit, and help them acquire jobs with their partners. Armakuni provide mentorship for Code Untapped's community using our consultant's skills and experience to support the growth of individuals and the programme. When individuals are placed with clients our engineers provide 1-to-1 coaching and mentorship to help them with the challenges they face and uplift their skills. We provide this services free of charge as part of our ongoing commitment to expanding economic opportunities for traditionally under-represented groups. We also developed and delivered training programmes on modern engineering practices to Code Untapped cohorts, introducing them to principles and practices that will enable them to be successful in the world of cloud native software development. As a remote first employer we employ colleagues from all geographies across the United Kingdom, some of these areas are considered to be deprived ie Sunderland, West Wales. Remuneration is based upon experience and is not varied based upon UK location. Armakuni focuses on the adoption of open source, multi-cloud, containerised technologies by clients, our deliveries are highly resilient, highly scalable and high-portable. Our approach enables Clients to adopt new technology solutions and overcome technical debt thereby avoiding vendor lock-ins and the associated costs. Armakuni have a culture of collaboration with clients that extends to the clients rainbow portfolio of vendors. We are advocates of modern engineering best practice that ensure security and risk postures are appropriate for the context of each delivery.

  Equal opportunity

  Armakuni works on a 'remote first' policy where individuals' contracted place of work is from home unless required to travel for client and company meetings. We are an Equal Opportunities employer and provide reasonable adjustments to meet the needs of our people. We actively celebrate diversity across the organisation and have made significant strides in recognising the neuro-diversity agenda across our workforce. Armakuni is a member of the Tech Talent Charter - Bringing together industries and organisations to drive greater inclusion and diversity in technology roles. Armakuni provides all employees with a £2000 annual Learning budget and 5 training days per year to focus on their own continuous learning. Individual support is provided by our Continuous Learning Lead and a team of Pastoral Managers to support our people. Despite falling outside the category of companies that must publish a Modern Slavery Policy, Armakuni has an active Modern Slavery Policy which monitors all critical risk areas such as supply chain for risk.

  Wellbeing

  Armakuni places a strong emphasis on Health and Wellbeing for our people and strives to constantly review our approach to ensure we are providing relevant support to our people. Armakuni were recognised externally by Great Places to Work in 2022, Armakuni were highly ranked in the Small Company Category as one of the leading companies in this area. ; ; We provide access to Private Medical Insurance, an online GP service, an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) as well as a newly launched therapy platform to support the mental health of our people through free access to therapists. Individuals are also provided with a monthly Wellness allowance to support their own wellbeing initiatives whether that be a yoga class or gym membership.; ; Individuals also have access to a cycle to work and an electric car leasing scheme.; ; Private Medical insurance, GP services and therapy reduce the burden on public services feeling them up for communities who require their services and reducing wait time for those in need.; ; We worked with Welsh Government to open source the work we did for them to enable other governments and groups to use the technology in future. We actively give back to the tech community through encouraging our staff to participate in the wider community during our learning days, (time when staff spend on personal and organisational learning). A number of our staff contribute to open source projects that support various technical communities and speak at conferences and meetups. We also do matched funding for any staff initiatives fundraising for charities and the community, which in recent times have included LGBT and gender equality groups. ; ; We work with Code Untapped to support those from under represented communities. We are also signatories of the Tech Talent Charter, showing our commitment to driving greater inclusion and diversity in tech.

Pricing

• Price: £225 to £1,900 a unit a day
• Discount for educational organisations: Yes

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at accounts@armakuni.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.