A JOURNEY TOWARDS OFFSHORE AGILITYAgile Coffee Talk, Chennai

Rams Parameswaran

Dec 19, 2015

VP / Group Manager, iNautix

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About me•Part of iNautix (a Bank of New York Mellon company), heading a few technology groups

•20 years doing software development, technology management and solutions delivery for clients

•Presently leading the Agile transformation @ iNautix

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Personal Disclaimer: There is more than one way to skin a cat

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http://dilbert.com/strip/2003-09-25

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We didn’t set out to solve any of these… we embraced their existence

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Organizational Complexity – Our context

Extension to onshore

Technical expertise

Functional silos

Change enhancements

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A year ago…

Receive orders and execute mode

Lack of visibility into who does what

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A year ago…

Daily handover status calls

Expectation mismatch

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No Surprises Here

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Why change was needed?

• Process overhead even for minor development• Detailed planning and coordination for releases• Communication challenges• Key person dependencies• Too many handoffs – talking through emails• Schedule overruns leading to burnout and accumulation of

technical debt• Unhappy stakeholders

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What outcomes were we looking for?

Quicker releases of valuable work items

Conformance to process, but make work known to everyone

Engaged workforce @ iNautix and develop knowledge base

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Value Team Excellence Over Individual Brilliance

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How did we change?

SME or Developer

Collaboration at an application or

project level

QA TesterBusiness Analyst

Project Manager

App Owner Business Analyst

Technical Lead

DeveloperWork boards,

team productivity and delivery

reporting

A real team

Onshore iNautix

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Kanban

Visualize the workflow

Improve by Collaboration

Manage Flow of Work

Limit Work in Progress

Make Process Policies Explicit

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Levers for change

Tenets of Agility

Tool to make work visible

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Levers for change

Collaboration

Prioritization

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Levers for change

Reporting & Metrics (CFDs, Cycle Time, Rework reasons etc.)

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Early Days …

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A few months later …

Single source of truth – blockers easily detected

Teams started to embrace WIP limits and pull

Next priority work items queued up in the board

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Fast forward to today …

Empowered teams

Work boards providing visibility

Better time to market

Improved knowledge with teams

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BenefitsOver Scrum

Minimal Disruption

Existing roles maintained

Improved visibility of work flow

Focus on reducing WIP

Better onshore / iNautix collaboration

Easy adaptability to new ways of working

Stakeholders see value early

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Model successfully rolled out to 15 teams

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What have we learnt?

Works very well for maintenance and enhancement projects

Scrum probably more suited for new product or application development

Technical discipline a must for increased agility

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Where are we headed?

Enterprise wide Agile transformation

Lean thinking and Agile concepts to be applied at a larger scale

Pilot initiatives to assess results and tweak approach

No one-size fits all approach; Adopt suitable Agile methods to get real agility

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• This presentation was prepared or accomplished by Rams Parameswaran in his personal capacity. Although due care has been taken while preparing this presentation, the author cannot be held responsible for any error or misrepresentation of information. Any opinions expressed in this article are the author's own. BNY Mellon does not endorse or approve, and assumes no responsibility for, the content, accuracy or completeness of the information presented. Data for this presentation has been drawn from various sources and is gratefully acknowledged.

• BNY Mellon is the corporate brand of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation and may be used as a generic term to reference the corporation as a whole and/or its various subsidiaries generally. This presentation and any products and services may be issued or provided under various brand names in various countries by duly authorized and regulated subsidiaries, affiliates, and joint ventures of BNY Mellon, where authorized and regulated as required within each jurisdiction. Not all products and services are offered in all countries.