Across a broad swath of industries, many organizations are undertaking Agile transformation journeys. We spoke to a top leader of an international insurance firm that is increasing how and where they leverage Agile approaches. Here are some of their thoughts.
What are the challenges you need to overcome to be successful?
As we looked to scale Agile across our organization, one of the biggest problems that we experienced was that our tool wasn’t, well, agile. It was little more than a fancy looking spreadsheet and our staff spent their time battling with the tool rather than leveraging the tool to help the business. That just wasn’t sustainable.
How do you go about addressing those problems?
Just like any other aspect of business, the ability to deliver work effectively using Agile requires a combination of the right information driving the ability to make sound decisions in a timely manner, and a tool that allows people to focus on doing their work rather than interacting with the tool. We needed to find a solution that could easily integrate with our other enterprise tools, and that could help us become more effective and efficient.
What do you do, and how does it help?
For us, Rally Software from Broadcom was the answer. We recently ran our first PI planning session using the tool and we cut the duration of the planning session by two hours. Multiply that across the number of people and the number of times we plan PIs and it becomes a material saving. And of course, that efficiency means staff time can be redirected into work that adds value to the business.
Rally integrates with our other tools—delivering information, consuming information, and generally improving workflow and automation. That means people have the information they need in a way that works for them, allowing them to focus on their tasks. We’re also planning to leverage Rally as a decision-making tool for the business—helping teams to prioritize and refine user stories and drive more improvements.
How is this driving your success?
We’re breaking down siloes. With the ability to collaborate in a tool that actually helps us deliver, we are strengthening relationships between business and IT. That improves understanding and ultimately drives engagement in ensuring that the best possible solutions are delivered—so we can keep increasing customer and business value.