Context
Our client, a global insurance company in Hong Kong want to adopt agile in their sales & claims automation projects to continuously deliver improvements.
They are unfamiliar with agile and have two big projects in development. The main objective is to accelerate agile adoption.
The expectation from senior management is that with the successful adoption of agile, they will see an improvement in terms of cost efficiency, workflow performance and system quality while also being able to deliver continuous improvement to the projects.
Challenges
Big organisations like our client face unique challenges when adopting agile. They’re more focused on the how rather than the why. When a project is ordered, the expectation is that the delivery team will execute on the specifications.
Sometimes, this results in the specifications no longer linking back to the purpose and goals of the projects.
On top of that, the project teams struggled with:
- Collaboration & communication with different department users and stakeholders
- An approaching dateline without clear understanding of the requirements
- Growing risks related to the projects, especially affected by the changing pandemic situation
- No T-shaped profiles which made bottlenecks harder to resolve
- Delays will have critical financial impact
Outcome
To adopt the agile way of working and make progress on these two projects, our consultant had to tailor solutions to answer their unique problems. As there are no T-shaped profiles, unlike in regular Scrum teams, two teams were created; a requirements & design team and the delivery team.
Constant communication is fostered between the two and the Product Backlog is ensured to be understood by all to avoid miscommunications.
Having dedicated project teams, they are now more knowledgeable about the business, systems and scope. After six months of implementing agile processes, training and coaching, the team is now able to manage project costs effectively, improve their workflow and fulfil their users’ needs.
