Author: Rajesh Patil (PMI-ACP, CSM, CSPO, MS in Engineering Management and Leadership)
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/pmrajpatil
Credit Unions are unique, they not only have to comply with strict financial regulations; but also compete with BIG BANKS with potentially better products and better banking solutions. To survive and thrive through this competition, they have to constantly innovate and stay ahead by providing the best banking experience for their members without compromising security or compliance to grow and retain their membership (customers are referred as members in Credit Unions).
Adding Agility in a highly regulated environment is always challenging, it’s even more challenging in Credit Unions because they have zero-tolerance for errors with high member visibility. Credit Unions tend to keep their expenses low so they can pass on the savings to their members through better rates and products.
When I joined a Credit Union, I realized that they were in a sweet-spot of being Agile for two reasons:
1. Their membership demographics: 90% of members are tech savvy. They come from fortune 500 technology companies located in Silicon Valley and Silicon Forest, they understand the need of being Agile to innovate.
2. Their size: This Credit Union is the right sized financial institute; not very big with huge bureaucratic organization structure and not too small with chaotic structure.
During 2010-11 timeframe, This Credit Union was going through the biggest merger in the history of Credit Unions; and the migration project was driven by an external project management firm with a traditional project management method. Adding any kind of Agility in this process was impossible due to the fact that the project had already started and any introduction of change could disrupt the project.
When the merger was completed, a new project was initiated with a short and fixed delivery date and I realized that this project was a perfect candidate for introducing Agile to the organization.
At first when I introduced “True Agile or Scrum” way of delivering a project, in just one week I realized that the team was opposing this change and were not ready for pure Agile transformation; so I decided to step-back and think of a different approach to add some Agility in the process without creating a sense of change.
Instead of using pure Agile/Scrum processes, I started with Agile principles and came-up with two very generic principles that blend both Agile and Credit Union principles.
I adopted two key goals:
1. High Project Visibility
high project visibility, I defined clear project roles like Product Sponsor, Product Owner and Team (Development + QA + Analyst) and I made sure that every team member knew what stage the project was in and who was working on which tasks at all times.
2. The Highest Business Value in the Shortest Period of Time
Behind the scenes I was following Scrum, instead of forcing this change on the team.
To gain
To gain the highest business value in shortest amount of time, I introduced incremental project development with the Product Owner prioritized list of features. This allowed us to follow two week sprints that delivered a potentially shippable product in short increments that delivered the highest priority features first.
· Management started to realize the value of Agile principles and provided their support to continue being Agile.
Following this process gave us multiple successes with high management visibility and recognition in the organization.
· Development teams were happy with constant wins and a steady paced delivery of projects, thus increasing productivity.
· QA teams were very happy with high project visibility and high quality products that eliminated stress during releases.
· Members were excited to see new features on a regular basis and felt that they were being listened too.
In a Credit Union it is important to develop a hybrid model of project delivery method, that includes standard SDLC processes with Agile thinking. My goal was to "Educate by Example," and not through training sessions so I decided to execute projects with Agile first and then speak about the Agile approach later.
Initially the team thought that the success of these projects was by luck, but when the same team saw continuous victories they realized that this success came from a well-planned effort of self-organized teams that utilized Agile to their best advantage.
Management has now agreed to integrate Agile as part of their PM Office process and has recommended executing all future development projects using Agile methodology.
My future goal at my Credit Union is to deliver projects with "Higher Business Value in the Shortest Amount of Time with High Project Visibility" and continue to use Agile methods as much as possible for all future projects including Enterprise and even Non-Technical projects.
It might take some time for me to gain full support from Management and teams to build a real Agile culture, but we have already seen the benefits of being Agile; “Our Credit Union was able to deliver more innovative products to their members in the shortest time frame”
Thanks to our Management for supporting Agile thinking in this organization, this initiative will make it easy for all Agile supporters to promote the Agile way of doing things going forward.
Being Agile in a traditional environment can be challenging but it’s not impossible if it's approached intelligently and customized the right way to fit the organization and its culture.
Disclaimer: My Credit Union management or employees are not responsible for anything mentioned in this article, its wholly a personal experience and opinion that's not been validated or certified by anybody.If you have concerns or questions regarding this article, please contact Rajesh Patil at pmrajpatil@gmail.com
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