Author: Rajesh Patil (PMI-ACP, CSM,
CSPO, MS in Engineering Management and Leadership)
LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/pmrajpatil
Email: pmrajpatil@gmail.com
Younger generations are earning good salaries, opening bank
accounts, saving for future, buying cool cars, and even buying homes and they are looking for banks that can serve them well with their needs. It's time for
the community banks to bend their traditional rules and meet the expectations of
this niche market. Serving this generation is not easy because they expect more and they are the vocal generations on social
media. Good or bad they say-it-loud on their Facebook walls and their voice can reach out to hundreds and thousands of people in seconds.
Credit Unions can grow their
assets and loyal membership count by fulfilling some basic needs of this younger generations like Mobile Banking, Protection from identity
threats and frauds and Easy and fast banking on-the-go.
.
.
Serving this generation is challenging, Credit Unions have to either
step-up their act or step- aside for BIG BANKS
to win this business opportunity. To benefit Credit Unions have to bend their much rigid rules to become a "Bank of Choice" for future generations.
Traditionally, credit unions are focused on other areas of
financial management and they tend to ignore technology, but with the growing
tech-savvy population it's time to shift their strategy and invest in
technology to simplifying the financial management experience for members.
At my credit union, I have started to see similar trends;
our new goal is to "FRIEND" this younger and tech-savvy generation by
offering them a compelling banking experience along with the products that match their personal needs.
As I always said credit unions remain tight on budget for
innovation, because of their basic business model. The best approach for credit
unions to maintain this balance between
innovation and investments is to
"GO AGILE".
Agile is new to my credit union but many other credit unions
have adopted agile since long; they have been very successful in developing an
Agile culture in the organization and they have even transformed their
work-place to accommodate Agile way of doing things.
Adding agility is a significant undertake for a credit union
of our size, but transformation in five basic stages might help us achieve our Agile
goal with minimum effort:
Stage 1: Develop
Agile Thinking
Like other credit unions, our employees come from
bigger organizations and they still prefer the hierarchy structure,
even though their previous companies have transformed in the last 10 years but
unfortunately they were not part of that transformation. Developing Agile
thinking is the basic responsibility of our leaders in the organization,
Agile thinking should not be limited to projects but can be adopted in day to
day tasks and this can be done by simply understanding the 12 principles of
Agile and trying to apply them wherever, whenever possible.
Stage 2: Continue
delivering projects with Agile
Agile is no longer a niche approach for software
development. It is becoming a standard for organizations to help them achieve
success across their project portfolios.
Both big and small companies are seeing huge benefits of going Agile, even the
most regulated organizations like Government and Defense apply Agile (See the
GOA Report published in July 2012). Credit union leaders should understand and continue to
encourage Agile by giving their full support
to Agile Managers, so they can continue to add more projects to their Agile portfolio.
Stage 3: Introduce
new Agile tools and reports
Even though tools don't promote Agile thinking but they can
support it; tools can make it easy to stay Agile for longer term. There are
hundreds of Agile supporting productivity tools, some are from big names like
Oracle and Microsoft; Microsoft calls there TFS 2012 a "Modern App
Lifecycle Management Tool" and it can help manage complete Agile project life
cycle; Other tools like Versionone, Jama Software, Altassian,
Rally, etc have better project management and reporting capabilities. It doesn't
matter whether we use a tool or use the basic MS Word and MS Excel
documents to track stories and tasks, it's more important to have the Agile reporting
and Agile tracking for better visibility and control.
Stage 4: Educate
Management and PMO
This is the most important task for Agile to sustain, if
Management and PMO believes in Agile and are willing to support, it won't take
us long to transform and be more productive and flexible. PM
Office will resist the change if they are not educated,
many project managers still think Agile as an adhoc way of project execution
with no documentation, no project plan and no control; but in reality it's the opposite
- Agile projects have better and current documentation but
the only difference is they are short, easy to understand, more visual when
compared to extensive 50 page documentation
that will never be read.
- Agile projects provides an easy to understand project plan in
a different format, instead of complex Gantt Charts. Agile uses Burn-down and
Burn-up charts to show the amount of WORK NOT DONE. We all know that updating the traditional project plans is a nightmare when
change occurs,but in Agile; the world
can change outside the current sprint and it's easy to manage change with less
dependencies.
- Agile projects give double the control on the project, since we
can monitor the project much closely and watch the project progress on daily
basis and we can identify issues before they negatively impact our project. In traditional project management
individuals and empowered but in Agile the team is empowered and converted in to a
self-organized team, which is better for
both project and organization.
Stage 5: Building
Multiple Agile Teams
Traditionally we are used to build one huge project team
when a project is initiated, the cost of the project is estimated based on how
big the team is and how long the project will take. Large project teams some times lead to communication and managing nightmares and if the teams are globally distributed the challenges doubled.
Agile works differently, we create multiple Agile teams with
good combination of skills in each team and these teams are waiting to take on any project.
Agile recommends to limit each Agile team to +/- 7 people to help better manage
the project.
Moving to Agile is not a choice anymore, it's becoming the normal
or much aspired way of executing projects. To be an Agile Organization you
don't have to follow the Agile process that's published in a book but instead
focus on developing an Agile thinking in the organization; you can achieve this
by selecting a list of Agile principles that will work for your organization
and use them as your Agile Ethos.
Bending credit union rules to support Agile will make the
credit union more compelling to younger and tech-savvy members and this might
be a positive change to thrive.
If you have concerns or questions regarding this article, please contact Rajesh Patil at pmrajpatil@gmail.com
