Building an Agile Base: How to Quickly Adapt to Business Changes

A large credit union was facing significant challenges in adapting quickly to the ever-evolving demands of their business environment. Despite their efforts to stay competitive, the organization struggled with sluggish decision-making processes and rigid operational structures that hindered their ability to respond swiftly to market changes.

The Project Management Office (PMO) had made multiple attempts to implement Agile and Lean methodologies to foster more flexibility and efficiency within the organization. However, these initiatives delivered only minimal results, failing to create the desired improvements in speed, collaboration, and productivity. The credit union continued to face roadblocks in streamlining workflows, improving cross-functional alignment, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement.

This situation left them seeking a more effective strategy to truly embrace agility and transform their operations to better meet the needs of their members and the fast-paced financial landscape.

Creating an Agile foundation for faster adaptation

The credit union, recognizing the need for external expertise, turned to our client—a large financial services company—for assistance in overcoming their operational challenges. In response, our client reached out to Technology Partners to provide Agile guidance and staffing solutions.

Understanding the urgency and complexity of the situation, Technology Partners deployed an experienced Agile leader to work directly with the credit union. Greg Smith, our Agile Delivery expert, spearheaded the formation of a greenfield team focused on building a solid Agile foundation from the ground up.

Under his leadership, the team began transforming the credit union's processes, fostering a more adaptive, collaborative, and efficient working environment. This initiative marked the first step toward embedding Agile principles into the organization's core operations, ultimately positioning them to better navigate the dynamic financial services landscape.

The solution

We assisted the team in selecting a project to pilot the Agile process and then trained the team on Agile fundamentals, guiding them in creating a proprietary Agile framework that would thrive in the credit union environment. This included designing a custom two-week sprint structure, integrating user experience and design into the development team, and dedicating an architect to the team. We also coached the product owner on using Alpha/Beta releases to minimize go-live risk and created a long-term roadmap to guide the team.

A lasting impact

The credit union achieved a remarkable milestone by taking a new product live to its 3 million members in less than 10 months—a significant improvement compared to similar initiatives in the past, which had taken several years to complete.

The team not only delivered the product at an unprecedented speed, but they also produced one of the highest-quality applications the organization had ever seen. Post-launch, the need for issue support was almost nonexistent, demonstrating the exceptional level of precision and care that went into the development process.

The success of this project was attributed to the best practices established by the greenfield Agile team. These practices were soon shared with the Project Management Office (PMO), leading to a ripple effect throughout the organization. New project teams began adopting these Agile principles, resulting in shorter time-to-market, higher-quality solutions, and an enhanced ability to pivot and adapt to new business insights even in the middle of projects.

This transformation positioned the credit union to respond more nimbly to member needs and market changes, setting a new standard for future projects.

Looking to jump-start your agility in response to your business's changing demands? Check out how we drive real results with our exceptional Agile Delivery service.