What is an Agile Model?
The mechanism of the agile model is that every project must be treated in a different way, they all need to be handled according to the requirements of a particular project. Furthermore, the existing methods must be tailored in the way they best suit the project. In Agile all the tasks are divided into small time boxes which are designed to deliver specific features for a release.
The approach which is adopted is known as the Iterative approach, working software build is delivered after each iteration. All the builds are phased in accordance with the features; the final build holds all required features demanded by the customer.
Iterative Approach
An iterative approach is where the content- of writing, stimulus, or sometimes methodology is adapted over the course of a research program.
Companies that were successful in implementing the Agile Model
By the nature of it, using an agile model has proven to be a challenge for many large organizations. The requirements of the agile model to work properly are flexibility, experimentation, and the ability to adapt quickly to a dynamic environment but these requirements seem inconsistent in various enterprises. Many enterprises have a very rigid environment.
The agility framework is not impossible to achieve. With the right framework and cultural mindset agility at a scale can be achieved. The following companies are proof that agility can be achieved with some good and forward-looking mindset and innovation.
ING
The ING headquarters in the Netherlands had a mass number of 3500 staff, moved to an agile model from a conventional/traditional one. They started with the headquarters and then applied the model to the whole business. They had a 350 nine-person “squad” and 13 “tribes”. These squads are multifunctional teams allocated to perform specific client objectives. The new ING agile organizational structure improved speed-to-market results and helped them to become the primary bank in the Netherlands in regard to innovation.
Barclays
During the time when Barclays began its agile transformation, the financial services company was already suffering because they already scattered teams using an agile approach. Barclays wanted to expand and integrate its Agile methods into a more effective unit. The company adopted a learning-oriented Disciplined Agile Delivery approach and implemented agile coaching, Barclays also worked to make their workspace to be more interlinked.
More than 800 teams changed their methods and adopted an agile approach and Barclays witnessed a 300% increase throughout. The complexity of the code dropped by 50%, test code coverage increased by 50%.
Cisco
Cisco was originally designed with the waterfall method, SBP (Subscription billing Platform) of Cisco used separate build, design, test, and deployment teams, with each team working in a sequence. The approach slowed the process of development which resulted in extended-release cycles, missed deliveries, quality was not ensured, and also a lot of overtime.
Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) was adopted by CISCO and it introduced three agile release trains on SBP—capabilities, defects and fixes, and projects. To collaborate on building and testing small features within one SaaS component was the intent of the company. Furthermore, the idea extended to delivering the small features to the system integration and testing team.
CISCO was able to deliver the new release of SBP on time without having to do overtime. The defects in the system were reduced to 40% in comparison to the previous Waterfall approach and the defect removal efficiency increased by 14%. All thanks to improvement in the team collaboration.
Panera Bread
Panera Bread has more than 1700 bakery cafes in the United States and Canada. It is required to speed its delivery of IT Solutions to support the growing business and rapidly changing business environment. It started with initiating a series of agile training workshops then later on it started with a new approach to two important projects with the help of an agile coach. After that, it started out with the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) framework.
Adopting DAD led to very quick and more frequent delivery, higher quality solutions, and improvement between IT and business were witnessed. Digital sales in the overall sales witnessed an increase of 25%.
LEGO Digital Solutions
LEGO Digital Solution works with a very popular toy-brick maker which is responsible for communication with customers via apps, wearables, computers, etc. The team initially contained five development teams, who were able to collaborate easily. However, difficulties arose when the team expanded to compose 20 teams.
Scrums and sprints were the only things the teams were successful with, they were struggling with client collaboration, cross-team alignment, platform development, and release planning. To solve the stated problems the group implemented the SAFe framework for adding a program level between the teams and the portfolio management process at the very top of the organization.
The results were a visible reduction in duplicated work, very few dependency issues, efficient and improved planning to address these issues, the group, and it also helped in improving client trust.
Ericsson
Component teams used the waterfall method for product development for Ericsson’s Media Gateway for Mobile Networks (M-MGw). The knowledge related to the product was confined to only a few people, and it took a heavy amount of time to receive feedback. Because of the increase in the competition agile and Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) was adopted by the company to bring in some flexibility and shorten the release cycles. Most of the teams kept on working in component teams while other teams after M-MGw’s transformation into a Scrum-based organization started working in agile. When the word of positive experiences of pilot teams went out the people from the outside got more enthusiastic and the company scaled up to more than 15 self-organized teams.
PlayStation Network
Across 8 cities more than 1000 Sony Interactive Entertainment(SIE) engineering members are required for each PlayStation product release. PlayStation adopted waterfall and Agile Scrum but they were still not able to yield good results, the cadence was varying with different groups iterating in different time frames.
The leadership decided to switch to SAFe for improving collaboration and Organisation. The company launched its very first agile release train after a month of coaching. SIE, today, follows a very strict cadence of 2 weeks with 12-week iterations. Across 60 scrum teams, some 700 members use SAFe and SIE was able to reduce initial planning time by 28%. This saved around $30 million a year.
Conclusion
Agile scrum proved itself beneficial for numerous organizations. Initially, the mod was used only by software development organizations, but the model now is also being used by other enterprises as well.
Ingrid Maldine is a business writer, editor and management consultant with extensive experience writing and consulting for both start-ups and long established companies. She has ten years management and leadership experience gained at BSkyB in London and Viva Travel Guides in Quito, Ecuador, giving her a depth of insight into innovation in international business. With an MBA from the University of Hull and many years of experience running her own business consultancy, Ingrid’s background allows her to connect with a diverse range of clients, including cutting edge technology and web-based start-ups but also multinationals in need of assistance. Ingrid has played a defining role in shaping organizational strategy for a wide range of different organizations, including for-profit, NGOs and charities. Ingrid has also served on the Board of Directors for the South American Explorers Club in Quito, Ecuador.
