Driving Productivity Gains: Agile Transformation in a Global Financial Powerhouse

Background

The client is one of the world's largest banking organizations with an asset base of $2.4 trillion, a vast network of 4,600 branches spread across six continents, and a massive workforce of over 220,000 employees. Altimetrik’s scope of engagement was within a major business unit of the bank consisting of multiple lines of business with approximately 11,000 technology team members.

Faced with recurring delays and infrequent releases, the Client had concerns about the Business Unit's ability to keep up with the rapidly changing market trends and meet customer expectation. Altimetrik was enlisted to assist in the transition of the Business Unit from traditional Waterfall to an Agile way of working, implementing a scaled operating model to achieve improved business outcomes.

While Altimetrik is engaged with the client for a larger technology modernization effort, this case study delves into the specifics of the Agile transformation – the challenges, solutions, and how the entire transformation helped to achieve better outcomes.

Assessment

Altimetrik’s Digital Business Methodology principally begins with a thorough assessment of the organization’s current state. Our Agile Practice rolled out this assessment covering multiple areas, including the engineering teams, product teams, business operations, third-party vendors, capability areas, and interactions with the leadership.

The goal was to gain insights into existing practices, processes, and capabilities, allowing the team to project a future state and conduct a gap analysis aligned with the transformation objectives. By understanding the organization's strengths and areas for improvement, the initiative aimed to optimize Agile adoption and enhance overall effectiveness in delivering solutions to customers.

Assessment Observations

The results of the assessment revealed:

1. 1. Delayed and infrequent releasesy
2. Inadequate alignment between technology and product organizations
3. Culture and resistance to change
4. Slow time to market
5. Project based development approach
6. Technological capabilities lacked the flexibility to respond quickly to the rapidly Changing market
7. Poor alignment of strategy with execution

The Agile Implementation Strategy

The Agile Transformation was executed in 3 waves to achieve two main objectives: The first objective being to organize teams around value and capabilities while the second was to shift from project-based delivery to product delivery.

WAVE 1

Silos were broken down and cross-functional teams were established to adopt Agile practices.

WAVE 2

Value streams and capabilities were mapped; cross functional teams were organized as Teams of Teams (Agile Release Train) and a new scaled agile operating model implemented to drive delivery of product value. This model is currently being scaled across the organization.

WAVE 3

Scaling Agility to the portfolio.

• Team 1
  Started with Team Level Agile - Created cross functional Teams across all Lines of Business

• Team of Teams 2
  Pilot for Scaled Agile approximately 20 Agile Release Trains
• Enterprise 3
  In Progress - Roadmap to Roll Out Scaled Agile across all Lines of Business 2023/2024

The following key practices were adopted for product mindsetdevelopment to enhance customer satisfaction

Transitioning from projects to customer needs
Shifting focus from project-based delivery to understanding and addressing customer needs and preferences.

Prioritizing value delivery
Ensuring that product development efforts align with delivering maximum value to customers and the organization.

Encouraging end-to-end ownership by cross-functional teams
Empowering cross-functional teams to take ownership of the entire product development lifecycle, from concept to delivery and support.

Embracing iterative development
Adopting iterative and incremental development cycles, where products are continuously improved based on feedback and learning from each iteration.

Aligning with business goals
Aligning product development initiatives with the broader strategic goals and objectives of the organization.

Promoting continuous learning
Cultivating a learning culture where teams regularly reflect on their work, gather insights from customer interactions, and use data-driven approaches to make informed product decisions.

Agile Structures

Given its history as a long-standing financial institution, the bank has hierarchical, siloed structures that can be challenged when faced with the demands of expedited delivery. Breaking the siloes was a critical success factor to enabling faster, more efficient delivery of value to the customer.

As part of this exercise, cross-functional teams were organized into Agile Release Trains (ART), focused on product and business capability to support Agile practices of flexibility, collaboration, and adaptability. Dedicated roles across Product and Technology were assigned to each Agile Release Train to ensure effectiveness throughout the entire solution development lifecycle (from Product Ideation through to Solution Delivery) with new roles, such as Release Train Engineer being adopted to facilitate agile operations across the teams.

Each Agile team was structured to ensure cross-functional representation (development, testing, UX design) with a dedicated product owner and scrum master.

Execution Framework

Execution Process

• Value Stream Mapping
• Re-Organize capacity around value streams
• Capability Mapping (Business Architecture)
• Driven around Product Strategy, Investment, Roadmap & Blog
• Adapted ways of work -bring product, ops and technology together

Execution Pillars

• Agile Transformation Strategies
• Agile Organization (around values)
• Agile Frameworks Standards, Playbooks
• Agile University (training and coaching)
• Tools and technology
• Performance Management
• Governance andReporting

This framework aims to promote efficiency, collaboration and successful adoption of Agile principles throughout the organization.

The Execution Process

Implementation of the Scaled Agile operating model was focused on:

Value Stream and Business Capability Mapping
Understanding of the business architecture modelled around business capabilities served as the foundation for identifying and evaluating the entire value stream with business and technology architects working together with the product team.

Re-organizing Capacity around Value Stream/Business Capabilities
Organizing teams and resources around business capability, rather than traditional functional silos fosters collaboration and efficiency in delivering value to customers.

Roles and Responsibilities
Assessing and mapping the skills, expertise, and capabilities of teams and individuals to ensure they align with the needs of the Agile transformation and newly established Agile Release Trains.

Driven around Product Strategy, Investment, Roadmaps, and Backlog
Aligning the Agile execution with the overall product strategy and investment decisions ensured that the Agile initiatives are in line with the organization's strategic objectives and priorities.

Adapted Way of Working
Facilitating seamless collaboration between Product, Operations, and Technology to enable end-to-end ownership and accountability, leading to better product development and delivery processes.

The Scaled Agile Framework was initially rolled out as a pilot within one Line of Business, where 20 Agile Release Trains, comprising average 6-7 teams were established, trained, coached, and launched in a highly accelerated timeline.

On the back of the success and learnings of the pilot, the Agile Transformation Roadmap includes future implementation of the Scaled Agile framework across all other Lines of Business in a phased and sequenced fashion through the remainder of 2023 and 2024.

Key Challenges Faced Thus Far

Leadership Buy In
In wave 1 of the Agile Transformation, leadership buy in across the Lines of Business was sporadic which stalled efforts to standardize Agile operations and evolve from team level model. This changed dramatically with the launch of wave 2 and the start of the pilot. Leadership played a driving role, with vested interest in the timeline, outcome, and success of the pilot. This shift was the most significant success factor.

Resistance to Change Due to Strong Organizational Culture
The strong organizational culture contributed to resistance to changing the ways of work, which initially was a major barrier to success. However, with the shift in leadership buy-in ahead of wave 2, it became easier to drive scaled Agile adoption.

Large Number of ARTs Launched as Pilot
The large number of Agile Release Trains (ARTs) launched as pilot posed some challenges in terms of coordination, alignment, and managing resources effectively during the early stages of the transformation. The aggressive timeline with a massive shift in the ways of work was also challenging.

Dependency Management
Managing dependencies between various teams, projects, and initiatives in an Agile environment can be complex, and failure to address this challenge may lead to delays or inefficiencies. There were several dependencies to manage, particularly across Product, Operations and Technology as well as third party vendor dependencies.

Capability Mapping
Identifying and mapping the skills and competencies needed for Agile transformation and guaranteeing that teams and Agile Release Trains have the essential expertise was a significant challenge. Again, with the shift in leadership buy-in ahead of wave 2, this became an easier hurdle to cross.

Shared Services Management
In a large organization like this, managing shared services in an Agile setup requires careful coordination and communication to ensure smooth operations and collaboration. Some of the key shared service areas are infrastructure to support the launch of the ART, appropriate environment, engineering excellence, DevOps practices, SRE and operations. These shared services were all outside of the Agile teams, and it was a challenging exercise to bring them all on board with the Agile way of working as part of a unified Agile process.

Third-Party Vendor Alignment
Aligning third-party vendors with Agile principles and practices posed challenges in terms of communication, integration, and collaboration. The third-party vendors were also on a different delivery cadence and the alignment in terms of planning and delivery with internal teams.

Outcomes Delivered

Having a sizeable number of Agile Coaches to provide the necessary assistance helped to alleviate some of the difficulties associated with too many teams for the pilot.

Adopting an effective change management strategy also contributed significantly to the success achieved. The effectiveness of the change was that over 3000 team members were trained in Agile methodologies, promoting a culture of continuous learning and improvement.

Agile Release Train Launch
Successfully launched 20 Agile Release Trains (ARTs), each comprising multiple Agile teams working in sync to deliver value. Currently rolling out scaled Agile framework to the remaining ARTs across the Lines of Business.

Business and Technology Partnership
Over the course of the Agile transformation, the collaboration between business and technology progressed from operating in silos to aligning for better outcomes. Presently, there is a partnership between technology and business as they jointly drive the transformation.

Productivity Improvement Goal
The goal set to achieve a 35% improvement in productivity through agile practices and efficiency is underway and although productivity improvements have been recognized, there is still work to be done across Wave 2 and 3 to achieve this goal.

These results demonstrate the success and positive impact of Agile transformation, showcasing its commitment to enhancing customer experiences, optimizing operations, and driving value-driven innovation throughout the organization.