Engagement Summary
In mid-2020, Monticello Consulting Group (Monticello) partnered with a front-office trading technology team at a leading U.S. financial institution to devise and implement a change management strategy to facilitate the adoption of Agile and transform the overall software delivery process. The goal of the program was to create an efficient and centralized software delivery approach and transform the software lifecycle to meet critical and immediate business requirements set forth by the front-office.
The Monticello team developed the strategy and brought the necessary expertise, program management, and leadership to meet global stakeholder needs and an ambitious timeline for a successful implementation. The Monticello team, along with Agile project management coaches and automation experts partnered cross-functionally with business and technology groups to strategically prioritize high-impact areas for improvements. Monticello created a new strategic roadmap and established best practices taking into consideration existing challenges faced by the development teams, ongoing resource constraints, and changing business needs. By identifying bottlenecks and remediating roadblocks, Monticello was able to reduce turnaround time and improve implementation quality.
Finally, the team ensured that the strategy also incorporated automated data management to provide clear and insightful KPIs to all stakeholders including the senior leadership team in order to monitor progress and facilitate more efficient decision making. The team leveraged the Jira platform to streamline the end-to-end software delivery process, reduce routines and cycle times, eliminate redundancy, and improve the development team’s employee satisfaction. Additionally, Monticello redesigned the client’s software delivery progress reporting. By defining robust Jira labeling standards, the team was able to create a dashboard within Jira to provide real-time insights and periodic business intelligence needed to spot trends, mitigate risks, and make informed decisions.
Agile Transformation using Jira Software
Case Study Detail
PROJECT BACKGROUND
Managing and maintaining a fluid software delivery lifecycle enables clients to optimize resource allocation, reduce costs, align strategic priorities, and accurately forecast future business needs. Over time, our client’s project management approach had become less Agile and the software delivery lifecycle was ineffective due to the manual, inconsistent, and disjointed processes. There was a clear business need to centralize and streamline the development process, establish Agile best practices, and obtain timely and critical insights via a robust and automated reporting dashboard to enable effective leadership decision making. By incorporating Scrum Agile in the software delivery lifecycle, Monticello helped eliminate inefficiency, reduce costs, and accelerate product delivery by removing complexity and providing a standardized approach in line with the industry’s best practices.
ENGAGEMENT OBJECTIVES
Agile
Implemented a standardized project management approach to align with Scrum Agile project management best practices for software delivery, project execution, and enhanced metric development for transparent and effective communication and decision-making.
Worked with technology partners, developers, and business users to develop a strategy for implementing Scrum Agile project management along with its best practices to deliver new product features
Liaised with Agile coaches for gap analysis to streamline and automate processes
Supported development team through effective communication and feedback loops for execution
Data Management & Analytics
Drove tangible business outcomes through intelligent capture, analysis, and reporting of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Established Scrum Agile routines such as Product Backlog grooming for development teams as per industry best practices
Defined structure & labeling standards for Jira tickets to provide clear insights in development work and accelerate defect resolution
Created a centralized Jira reporting dashboard to provide an automated program and workstream level metrics for accurate planning
Developed KPIs such as burn-up charts, burn-down charts, velocity charts, and other reporting metrics for management communications
Addressed and escalated risks and issues while attaining necessary sign-offs required for completion of documentation and processes
BUSINESS VALUE
Monticello collaborated to induce an Agile mindset and develop an efficient software delivery lifecycle to enhance and transform the client’s experience. By leveraging our subject matter expertise, program and project management toolkit, and data management and visualization capabilities, Monticello ensured the strategy was adopted across all the technology teams while simultaneously providing more robust insights reflecting increased efficiency and overall developer satisfaction to the senior leadership team.
