Example Reflection – Learning Launch

Challenge

As part of the organization’s digital strategy the senior management was looking at identifying processes  that are manual and repeatable in nature and that can be progressively semi-automated or fully  automated depending on the complexity of the process there by deriving operational efficiency. This  added constraint being, this would have to be done without any additional budget and by showing an  improvement to the bottom-line, with an overall reduction in cost on a year on year basis

Selection

As part of the technology function, there was an increasing focus on going digital. There was focus on  time to market for the new ideas and incrementally adding value so that more and more users can be  engaged with the tool which becomes part of the learning, feedback and improvement process. To  accomplish this, we decided to adopt Agile practices to achieve this objective of adding incremental  value with short cycles of development

Application

Out organization had historically followed a waterfall-based development, testing and release approach.  The idea of setting up Agile was fraught with many challenges. To help achieve this objective we decided  to do a learning launch with a sub-department within technology that had all its users within  technology. The team was reorganized and was assigned an Agile coach for a period of 8-12 weeks. The  team was requested to go through the entire pilot with an open mind and emphasis was laid on the  learning and adapting to a new practice. As part of the transformation, all the team members within the  team were certified on Agile best practices. The team went through the agile transformation journey in  12 weeks followed by team adopting to the new approach for a period of 12 weeks.

Insights

User centric approach was one of the key outcomes from this transformation. Many members of the  team had never interacted with the end user and as a result were not aware of the true issues. In  previous case features were being developed and the user only see it at the end of the development  cycle. With this new approach, it was easier for the user to provide quick feedback as they are part of  the entire development process. Although it resulted initially in more time spent with users, once the  team went through a few iterations and users were part of the entire process it resulted in more  tangible benefits down the line. The focus was always on providing the best value to the user. Here the  users were collaborating with the technical team in achieving a common objective. As a result, both the  users and the technical team demonstrated empathy, team spirit and understanding of each other’s  strengths and weaknesses. This allowed for the tool and the process to be reshaped in a way that would  gain the most acceptance from the end users.

The other main take away in applying the learning launch on the technology function was primarily  driven by the fact that, if digital transformation within technology can show savings and improvements  then it could easily gain acceptance across the organization where technology supports. The potential  for saving and realizing other untapped objectives could be manifolds.

