Agile Assessments & Process Improvement
Reach Full Agile Potential
Thanks to Valstroom’s assessment and process improvement partnerships, our clients are better enabled to streamline the flow and management of product delivery, reduce and prevent productivity bottlenecking, and reach optimized efficiency.
How We’ve Done It
Client Support: Wealth Management
Support Type Required: Agile Development
Development of a leading edge solution for the Variable Annuity Hedging Program, integrating investment market tools and vendors from Canada and the US, under an Agile Framework.
The program was following the new Agile Framework developed by the recently established Agle Centre of Excellence under the Global PMO. The program team included internal teams from Global Investments Business, Investments Technology Systems, Global PMO, and vendors from the US (StreamBase and Panopticon).
The solution was a critical application that would analyze, process and provide market data recommendations of Intraday Risk Monitoring System, using StreamBase and Panopticon technologies and integration with Findur, Atlas, Reuters and Bloomberg market data feeds, and Brokers interface using FIX Gateway.
The program team was struggling with the execution and delivery of functionality, due to a number of reasons that included inadequate knowledge of Agile methodologies and tools, development teams running alternating sprints collocated and remote, unclear status of work in progress, and backlog management and refinement.
Understanding of the Agile mindset, tools, and principles was very low among executives, senior management and the program teams.
Valstroom Actions
Conducted an Agility Maturity Assessment to expose the areas for improvement.
Deep dives into each area needing optimization to develop a practical action plan.
Developed a homogeneous understanding of Lean and Agile practices and principles across the program team.
Conducted a number of workshops to introduce Lean and Agile mindset to executives and senior management.
Trained the development teams on Scrum and Kanban through hands-on workshops and established a set of tools to track work in progress with physical boards and virtual tacking when part of the teams was remote.
Implemented a number of dashboards and information radiators that allowed the teams track progress on a weekly basis, improving transparency and trust between teams.
Coached the team during scrum ceremonies, defining the sprint backlog, breaking down of stories, sizing and team capacity.
Implemented several visual dashboards and information radiators that allowed the teams to track progress on a daily basis, adjusting WIP limits to improve flow.
Lead the team to greater trust and higher performance by improving transparency and collaboration between the scrum team, key business stakeholders and vendors/partners.
Implemented numerous mechanisms and tricks to help teams manage their time better:
- Time-boxing all meetings.
- Conducting meetings in the hallway in front of the program board.
- Using video conferencing tools during remote sprints.
- Encouraging different members of the team and business stakeholders to run the demos.
Results
The client was able to improve the development and reliability of the deployment of features planned and committed during sprint planning.
Inconsistencies between co-located and remote team sprints were resolved by aligning and synchronizing the teams while also improving flow, team trust, and transparency.
The solution was released to production on time with greater than anticipated adoption from the business users which resulted in better decisions and reduced risk on all investment positions.
The Valstroom Difference
“I could not more strongly recommend Valstroom. They were absolutely critical to a very successful transformation of our Information Services department. We worked with them to define our vision, roadmap and supporting execution plan – and it has paid off. We have bridged the gap that we previously had between IS and our business partners, we have a much more empowered and high performing enterprise, and we have truly transformed our culture! Thank you Valstroom.
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