Increased Agile Development Team Efficiency & Institute Company-Wide Transformation
Identified and implemented changes that led to specific action steps.
Case Study: A leading financial services company and mortgage lender, with year-over-year growth exceeding 400%, needed to ensure their expanding IT department and development teams were using Agile as efficiently as possible with the day-to-day demands of hyper expansion. To make sure their “We Care” philosophy extended to their employees, they requested Intertech’s Agile expertise in identifying a short-term roadmap with specific actions to make their Agile Transformation as efficient and productive as possible.
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Case-Study
Methodology
Agile Transformation
Project
Increase Agile Development Team Efficiency By Identifying and Implementing Changes That Lead To Specific Action Steps That Help Development Team Keep Up With Company Demands
Project Challenge
The client had been using an Agile approach in their software development teams for about 18 months before reaching out to Intertech for an Agile Assessment. While they had experienced some benefits implementing Scrum, leaders were concerned the current Agile teams were not operating at their peak, and there may be room for improvement.
As the company entered a period of explosive growth, the IT leaders wanted to ensure their software teams could keep up with the ever-increasing demands for product development. Enlisting Intertech, they outlined questions that needed to be answered:
- Were the right people in the best role for their skills?
- Were the team sizes effective to allow teams to move quickly and stay focused on delivering the best technical solutions?
- Were their current processes helping or hindering their teams’ ability to deliver high-quality products?
These were just a few of the questions Intertech’s Agile Coach investigate during the Agile Assessment before Intertech provided a roadmap of specific action steps to keep their Agile Transformation moving forward effectively.
Solution
There were three key areas of improvement as a result of the Agile Assessment.
- First, they needed an Enterprise Agile Coach to lead their Agile Transformation beyond the initial 10 Scrum teams within IT.
- Second, there was a need to create additional Scrum teams to support the company’s growth, which led to a need to scale their Agile approach. This scaled Agile approach needed to include cross-team planning, dependency management, program and portfolio planning, and explicit value delivery goals.
- Finally, someone needed to take Agile principles and practices beyond the walls of IT to spread the benefits of a successful Agile transformation to other departments within the company.
Intertech helped in each of these three key areas of improvement.
While getting an Enterprise Agile Coach hired was the most important step, it was also a time-consuming process. By providing assistance in creating an appropriate job description and participating in the interview process, Intertech’s Agile Coach provided guidance and expertise to help the customer find the best Enterprise Agile Coach for them. While helping find and hire their Enterprise Agile Coach, Intertech’s Agile Coach created the foundation for a scaled Agile approach that included portfolio management and cross-team planning.
Once the Enterprise Agile Coach was hired, he took over and built the scaled Agile approach for the company, including setting up a new program for an upcoming initiative.
To begin taking the Agile Transformation beyond the walls of IT, Intertech’s Agile Coach developed relationships with key leaders within the client’s Business Transformation team, highlighting ways their current initiatives could support the overall company Agile Transformation.
Overview
A fast-growing financial services company hired Intertech’s Agile Coach to perform a 12-week, in-depth Agile Assessment. During this assessment, the coach met with each of the 10 Scrum teams numerous times, observed team Scrum ceremonies, interviewed key leaders within IT and in other departments, and reviewed the current Agile tools and processes. This assessment occurred entirely remotely since the client’s IT department was spread across the US.
Throughout the assessment process, Intertech’s Agile Coach met regularly with IT leaders to provide feedback and discuss potential next steps. This close client partnership led to a clear, short-term roadmap with specific actions for the client to take and guidance for each stage of their journey.
Through the Agile Assessment, Intertech’s Agile Coach provided the customer’s IT leadership a short-term roadmap with specific actions to move their Agile Transformation forward. This included small steps, such as simple process changes in how the Scrum teams used their Agile work tracking tool, and larger initiatives, such as implementing cross-team planning every quarter. As a result, the IT leadership team were able to move ahead with:
- Hiring the necessary roles, such as an Enterprise Agile Coach.
- Creating teams of the appropriate size.
- Celebrating their successes with what they had already accomplished during their first 18 months of Agility.
The initial 10 Scrum teams grew to over 20, including an extensive program, explicit planning activities, and cross-team communication to support the company’s unprecedented growth.
Intertech has been in business for nearly 30 years. Many of our projects are considered confidential by our clients. For this reason, and out of respect for our customer’s privacy, we do not mention companies by name regarding specific projects, with the clear understanding that the project outlined and presented is actual work Intertech and their consultants have completed successfully.
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