how “scrums” and “sprints” can - actuaries institute · through ikw the team also meet a...
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How “Scrums” and “Sprints” can
support the strategically focused
actuarial function
Darren Robinson, MLC Life Insurance, Chief Actuary
Maria Muir, Deloitte Partner, Agile Leader
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Our topics today
• What is Agile?
• Key concepts and practises
• When to use Agile?
• A real-life example from MLC Life Insurance
• Benefits to your customers and teams
• How to get started?
• Q&A: How would you use Agile in your team?
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What is Agile?
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Agile values
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Iterative and incremental approach
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What Agile is not – Myth busting
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Agile for teams – Sprints and scrums
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When to use Agile?
WaterfallAgile
Consider if there is value in continuing
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Background
The Actuarial Information team are responsible for the MLC ‘Insurance Knowledge Warehouse’ (IKW) which
continues to evolve. It holds a vast amount of information including sales, claims and performance data
down to benefit and customer level.
Through IKW the team also meet a range of reporting requirements for a number of business units.
Pre-Agile: What were our drivers for change
• Team of busy individuals producing quality stuff, but not a high volume of it
• People risks – we had a number of single point dependencies within the team
• Distinct silos of experience and skills within the team
• Growing list of requests from the business – a team in demand!
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Agile-in-action @ MLC Life Insurance
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Some of our key drivers included the ability to shine a light on what the team were doing and to deliver more items, more often through improved team effectiveness.
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What we were hoping to achieve
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Implementation
• Engaged an Agile Coach to work with the team – initial training, customisation of processes, on the job coaching
• Initial focus on Kanban board and Daily stand-ups to visualise work and bottlenecks
• Process to identify all items sitting with individuals and putting them into a ‘backlog’ to be prioritised
• Implemented Scrum team structure with 2-week sprint cycles
Ways-of-working
• Initial focus on ‘slowing down, to speed up’
• Used pairing of team members to reinforce cross-skilling
• 2-week sprints included Retrospective sessions to review, assess and adjust ways of working
• Each sprint includes a Planning session to prioritise and size what will be worked on next
12Copyright © 2017 MLC Limited. All rights reserved.
Getting started with Agile
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Key components of Agile
• Time-boxed sprints• Daily stand-up• Retrospective• Planning• Kanban board
• User stories and acceptance criteria• Backlog refinement• Scrum master• Product owner• Pairing of team members
Kanban board: Visualisation of work Daily stand-up in action!
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Results achieved
Challenges and roadblocks experienced
• Identifying all items being worked on by individuals to form a backlog
• Prioritisation across multiple stakeholders and channels
• Educating stakeholders – No longer approaching their favourite team member, and not being given exact delivery time-frames when items are in backlog
Some of the key benefits so far
• Productivity uplift: Team are producing 2-3x more output
• Priorities understood and agreed
• Team able to focus on the right things – Removed most ad-hoc requests and distractions
• Pairing and cross-skilling has led to dramatic increases in individual team members capabilities
• Team spirit/engagement uplift
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Let’s hear from the team
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Things that worked well
• Visual board and Daily stand-ups: Transparent for all to see who is doing what.
• 2-week sprints: Short term goals, very motivating, delivering items more often.
• Prioritisation: Focusing all the effort of the team on the right things.
• Pairing: Significant uplift in skills across the team and reduced single point
Dependencies.
• Retrospectives: Opportunity to reflect and revise on our ways of working.
Things to consider
• Don’t be too strict: We haven’t stuck to a formula, rather we have ended up with an adaptation of Scrum and
Kanban that continues to evolve.
• Prioritisation: Need a meaningful way of deciding what gets prioritised.
• Stakeholders need to be taken on the journey: Explain the new ways of working and promote the benefits.
Explain how they can help you prioritise their requests.
• Pairing: Rotate to allow all team members to get exposure to everything. This includes pairing experienced
with inexperienced, but also experienced with experienced, and inexperienced with inexperienced.
• Agile coach: Bringing in a quality coach to provide on the job coaching and help drive adoption of new
ways of working is essential.
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Lessons and recommendations
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Benefits of Agile ways of working
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How to get started?
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How would you use Agile in your team?
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Q&A Discussion