Process Consulting

Scaled Agile Transformation - FinTech

An international fin tech startup had engaged Miros Tech to help with an agile transformation for its software delivery approach.

 

Scaled Agile Transformation

• • 100+ people across product and technology impacted by the change  
  • Multiple products supported, with the main focus on a digital banking alternative for under-served markets  
  • Multiple offices and locations across the US, Europe, and Asia  
  • An aspiration to become one of the leading innovative financial technology company in a highly regulated industry

 

Transformation Drivers

MirosTech worked with the client to initiate an end-to-end agile transformation, changing its cultural DNA and delivery capabilities

Drivers	Supported by Agile
Get features out to market faster	Increased speed to market through a two-week release engine  Ability to design, develop, and test iteratively throughout the process
Support decoupled component releases	Product-based agile teams that can innovate and deploy their products independently across the platform  Feature toggling to reduce technical debt around code branches
Decrease hand-offs and coordination	Agile teams that think, act, and deliver as a single, fully integrated product and technology unit
Improve quality of code base and platform	Product model to drive code ownership and service-based thinking to improve quality  Testing at every step of the process to encourage quality through increased accountability
Enhance reusability and integrity of components	A unified architectural vision to drive component integrity and reuse of common components

 

Overview

The result was a broad-based transformation across the enterprise 

 

New end-to-end agile method 

• • • Intake, program, product, software, and release processes were all made agile
    • Releases became “nonevents” occurring every two weeks

New platform componentization based on SOA

• • • Platform was refactored into a discrete set of platform services and applications
    • Supported teams to focus on product stewardship and technical debt reduction to drive quality improvements

New organizational and team structure

• • • Product and technology were reorganized into 35+ cross-functional scrum teams
    • Each scrum team has ownership of a platform service/application and is responsible for a set of platform key performance indicators

New agile management and automation tools

• • • New tools setup for managing programs and product backlogs
    • New tools setup for automating continuous integration and deployment

 

Challenges & Solutions

Miros Tech delivered effective solutions to overcome common challenges tied to scaling agile

 

Large programs	Prioritization	E2E experience	Risk and compliance	Engineering
Broke large programs down into low-level business epics grouped into Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) using agile practices, such as story mapping to limit work in progress and increase speed Setup a collaborative approach to MVP definition involving scrum teams, architects, and other support services, such as UAT Empowered scrum teams to decompose epics together and to define user stories touching their product area	Setup prioritized queues throughout the value stream to inform future work initiatives Maintained global priorities for scrum teams to pull from based on capacity Empowered scrum teams to prioritize their own product backlogs with dedicated product owners	Setup E2E delivery managers to carry a program from inception to completion and to coordinate delivery dependencies Engaged UAT group upfront in the definition of epics and authorized them to validate and accept E2E functionality delivered by scrum teams Setup governance mechanisms, such as an Impediment Removal Board to resolve global impediments and keep scrum teams moving	Setup a series of controls check points, including an engagement review early in the program life cycle, a review of epics associated with each program, and a controls demo day to provide feedback/acceptance on delivered functionality	Supported scrum teams in decoupling owned components from other teams to support independent releases Drove automation of new functionality to help with rigorous and fast regression testing Coached teams on getting ‘code clean’ each sprint to help improve product quality Automated build and deploy processes for new functionality and defects Established a twoweek cadence for releasing software

 

Value Delivered

Within 3 months, the business results were already apparent:

 

120% Increase in output. Team output increased by from the start of the transformation

50 Reduced cycle time. Teams are producing and releasing ~50 user stories every two weeks

88% Reduced defects. Improved quality with no cost to performance, reducing production defects by 88% 

3 hrs Shortened testing time. Platform-level testing went from seven days to under three hours with automated testing

80th High predictability. Scored in the 80th percentile for predictability according to an industry standard survey

7 Greater coordination. Established agile as the new norm, with more than 7 stand-ups run in parallel each day

4 Faster time to value. Delivered 4 versus 2 releases and 3 versus 1 major initiatives from the previous year