Challenge

I work for a software company which develops core system software for insurance companies. We  release new versions of the software every year. The new version contains enhancements which helps  Insurance companies build and transact insurance products more effectively. Our customers face the  following challenges to upgrade to the new version:

1. Business interruption: Past upgrades have typically taken 4-6 months. While the business can

continue using the software, they cannot make and changes to the software once the upgrade  process has started. Since the software manages the key products and transactions for the  insurance company, not allowing changes to the software for 4-6 months limits the insurance  company’s ability to respond to market and regulatory changes

2. Cost: An upgrade requires investment from the insurance company both in terms of time and

resources. If the customer decides to skip a few versions and then upgrade to a higher version,  then the costs are comparatively higher.

The business problem was to devise a ‘continuous upgrade model’ which results in minimum business  interruptions and allows our customer to upgrade with reasonable investments.

Selection

We decided to use the mind mapping tool to transition from the what is to what if stage. A key  consideration behind using the mind mapping tool was encourage participation from multiple  stakeholders – customer, internal product management, project teams. Through mind mapping, the  intention was to derive a set of insight statements from a set of themes and observations and generate  a design criterion for the new model.

Application

At the what is stage, we managed to get a lot of data on past upgrades through project reports,  retrospectives, interviews. We also considered how the product management introduces changes into  the software – essentially the software development lifecycle. We made large posters using the data  and pasted them on walls of our conference room. We then invited small team consisting of customer  representatives, onsite project teams who manages upgrades and normal releases and members from  the product management team to review the posters and record observations from the posters into  sticky notes. The observations formed the basis of mind mapping exercise. The members of the team  were asked to group their observations into themed clusters on the wall.  A set of common themes are  identified. There were a few outliers as well. Through deliberation, we came up with a set of insight  statements and design criterion. The insight statements were recorded using a large note against each  theme.

Insight

The insight statements and design criterion were as follows:

1. Large upgrade releases from product management results in longer business interruptions –

Need for smaller upgrade releases.

2. Lack of co-ordination between product management and project teams – need for an agile way

of working.

3. Need for a well-defined product road map to enable customer plan for the upgrade  4. Little reuse of artefacts from normal release and past upgrade – Reusable artefacts thus

reducing cost.

Approach

After the mind mapping exercise, we asked the participants about their feedback on the workshop.  Their feedback was quite positive and they enjoyed the engagement piece. One of the things that we  would like to do in the future is to involve external consultants in the process. Now that we have  identified the insight statements and design criterion, we would like to use the learning launch to  experiment.

