National Bank Replaces Spreadsheets with Jira to Implement Agile-at-Scale
Overview
The process of managing and communicating work across Software Development and IT teams is critical within an organization. However, the ability to provide real-time visibility to other business functions and management is often an afterthought. Our client, a mid-sized bank with locations across the U.S., needed to improve how they planned and executed their software development and IT operations projects, as well as provide real-time insights to other business teams. This required tools and processes that enabled improved visibility into workflows and how that work tracked against strategic outcomes. Working with Praecipio's agile practitioners, our client was able to replace their use of spreadsheets and implement Agile-at-Scale the right way across teams and business verticals.
THE CHALLENGE
Previously tracking projects in Excel spreadsheets, the national bank needed guidance on which tools could support their Agile and Waterfall processes and how to configure those tools to generate real-time business intelligence. In particular, our client looked to us for recommendations and best practices around Agile software development to better manage projects with sprints- something not possible or practical using Excel spreadsheets. The amount of manual entry, lack of visibility, and reporting limitations our client experienced using spreadsheets was incredibly costly in terms of time and resources. Without Agile or Kanban boards, determining the status and the estimated delivery date of projects was cumbersome- if not impossible. Our client was unable to effectively plan for releases and manage resources to hit deadlines without overloading certain people, which resulted in bottlenecks. In order for their software development and IT operations teams to adopt agile ways of working, our client required help to map out best-in-class frameworks and methodologies and configure Jira Software to support them.
THE SOLUTION
The Praecipio team worked with the bank's client subject matter experts to select the best Agile practices for their business and then we set up Jira to support those principles Since our client lacked visibility into the status of IT and development projects, we created these projects inside Jira Software so that team members could easily view and manage work and leadership had visibility into the progress of that work. Furthermore, by configuring Jira to support Agile and Waterfall best practices, teams no longer had to waste time manually entering data into spreadsheets. Excited to begin their Agile journey, we helped our client take significant steps to effectively estimate work, manage resources, and track performance with Jira. For their IT Ops team, we helped them improve communication and implement Kanban best practices for tracking their work in progress. Lastly, the bank was able to increase tool adoption by having Praecipio deliver training sessions on how to use Atlassian tools to implement the Agile methodology.
THE RESULTS
Praecipio helped the national bank define the best Agile practices for its business and then set up Jira in a way that enabled teams to scale those practices. After a successful Agile implementation with Jira, software development and IT operations teams delivered quality products faster. Additionally, teams outside of IT also had the project insight they needed to better execute their strategic initiatives. Lasty, we helped the national bank increase tool adoption by delivering training sessions on how to leverage Jira to implement Agile processes.
