Insurance Firm cuts cycle-time using Agile Project Management Practices
Project duration was reduced by 20%, for a net savings of nearly $5 million. The percentage of projects coming in on time and within budget increased by 40%. As a result, management has broadened the scope of the initiative to implement agile practices across the organization.
The organization was running various project initiatives simultaneously amount to multi-million dollar project portfolio. The client was looking to achieve a decrease in time-to-market, which was as a result of pressure from competitors in the market, and its expanding line service. An aggressive goal was set to significantly reduce the average project duration and improve internal customer satisfaction. The client set to achieve this goal within three years and also aimed at a 45% reduction in project duration and a 25% increase in customer satisfaction.
At the time, the client’s approach to managing project depended almost entirely on traditional phase-based deliverable schedules, with a heavy development methodology.
The client adopted a mix of agile methodologies and product development techniques and frameworks, with the hope of benefiting from short project durations that come with an iterative adaptive approach. Adopting agile practices and techniques as the development approach to this initiative propelled the organization to change management practices – in a traditionally trained project management community. The new management practices are centered around early and frequent delivery of value to end-users.
At the early stage of this initiative, our principal consultant was an integral part of an internal group that provided agile coaching to teams, in addition to training tailored to their environment.
After 12 months of mentoring and coaching the teams on Agile practices, the organization realized the following results:
- Reduction in Average project duration: a net savings of almost $3 million resulted from a 20% reduction in avaerage project duration.
- Improved customer satisfaction: the target was 25% improvement, and the actual result was nearly 30%, and ahead of projection by 12 months.
- About 95% of all the initiatives adopting agile practices now deliver the desired value to end-users within budget and on-time – on the other hand, with waterfall approaches, less than 50% of projects delivered needed value within budget and schedule.
Approximately about 55% of the client’s portfolio of projects has now adopted some form of agile project management. Due to demonstrated successes through a combination of agile project management practices, the client has established strategic goals that formalize the intent to “adopt agile” across the enterprise. As a result, management has now mandated a doubling of the percent of projects using agile methods.
Project Helpline, with the experience and leadership of our consultants, continues to help lead coaching and mentoring efforts that will further ingrain agile practices into the company’s business operations.