TransUnion, the leading credit bureau in South Africa is constantly looking to maintain its leader position through continuous improvements. The organisation wanted their development teams to improve their time to market, be more productive and improve the quality of the development teams’ work. TransUnion planned to achieve this by replacing their traditional software development methodology with Scrum. In order to achieve the objective, IQ Business, through the Agile service offering (agility@IQ) was tasked with taking 3 of TransUnion’s development teams through an Agile transformation journey.

1. technology enablement
Technology
Enablement
provides clients with
a pin-point analysis
of their functional
challenges.
The leading, independent management consulting firm in South Africa
Introduction
In today’s highly competitive environment, companies are constantly seeking better business results. In
order to achieve this they aim for:
faster time-to-market for their products;
earlier return on investment;
better customer satisfaction, and;
improved quality of their products.
Agile enables these outcomes when compared with traditional software development approach.
The Agile transformation project at TransUnion was no exception. The organisation wanted their teams to go
faster, be more productive and produce better quality technology products. Through various discussions with
IQ Business the decision was made to adopt the Scrum framework and partner with IQ Business to help
TransUnion start their Agile journey.
The IQ Business team was appointed to do an initial assessment of organisational readiness, facilitate 2-day
Scrum training (Agile Boot camp) for 3 pilot teams and coach these teams in order to embed the Agile
principles, practices, tools and techniques with a focus on implementing Scrum as the selected framework.
The Client: Background
TransUnion offers various product offerings to both consumers and businesses, through several operating
divisions: Credit Bureau, Analytic and Decisioning Services and Auto Information Solutions.
For consumers, TransUnion provides information resources and helpful tools for a clear understanding of
their credit history and financial reputation, and to guard against the theft of personal information and potential
fraud. Consumers also rely on this organisation for car value and history reports.
For businesses, TransUnion provides powerful analytic and decisioning solutions, backed by professional
service and current, comprehensive data for all Southern African businesses.
Some highlights of TransUnion South Africa:
 It is the largest credit bureau in South Africa that maintains both consumer and business data
 Through Auto Information Solutions, TransUnion is the country’s leading provider of automotive
information
 At the center of the South African economy for more than 100 years
 TransUnion Auto Information Solutions maintains more than 13 million individual vehicle profiles
Agile Transformation – TransUnion South Africa
TransUnion, the leading credit bureau in South Africa is constantly looking to maintain
its leader position through continuous improvements. The organisation wanted their
development teams to improve their time to market, be more productive and improve the
quality of the development teams’ work. TransUnion planned to achieve this by replacing
their traditional software development methodology with Scrum. In order to achieve the
objective, IQ Business, through the Agile service offering (agility@IQ) was tasked with
taking 3 of TransUnion’s development teams through an Agile transformation journey.

2. technology enablement
Technology
Enablement
provides clients with
a pin-point analysis
of their functional
challenges.
The leading, independent management consulting firm in South Africa
 Maintains data on 17 million consumers and 3.3 million businesses
 More than 36 million consumer payment profiles, updated monthly
 Provides access to more than 141 million business profiles worldwide in conjunction with D&B
The Business Challenge
Some of the main challenges which IQ Business team faced at TransUnion were:
 Co-location - teams were distributed across multiple areas of the office
 Roles - Scrum was a new process for some of the teams and team members had to step into new roles
and responsibilities such as Scrum Master and Product Owner
 Testing - most of testing efforts were outsourced to a vendor in India
 Dedication (100% allocation to projects) - some employees were shared between multiple teams
 Business understanding of Agile - most stakeholders and executives were new to the process and
some of the concepts were not clear to them (i.e. sprints, stories, story points, velocity and other).

3. technology enablement
Technology
Enablement
provides clients with
a pin-point analysis
of their functional
challenges.
The leading, independent management consulting firm in South Africa
The Solution
The Agile transformation project for TransUnion took place between October and December 2013 over 3
phases:
1. Initiation (5 days)
Review and assess the current TransUnion project environment in relation to the proposed pilot projects
selected to assess the constraints, governance requirements, team structure, infrastructure and other
factors which were to be considered in order to tailor the Agile approach most suited to the selected pilot
projects.
2. Tailored Agile Boot camp (2 days)
Scrum training for 30 attendees with the following key objectives:
 To provide an overview of the Agile approach to projects including values, principles and
demystifying the myths
 To provide a detailed understanding of the Scrum Framework focusing on roles, ceremonies and
artefacts
 To provide a practical walkthrough of the Scrum Framework by using practical exercises to
reinforce the theory learnt
 To provide an understanding of how to estimate and plan in an Agile environment
 To provide additional learning content covering engineering principles (XP), a brief overview and
application of Kanban, Scaling models and integration with traditional approaches and roles
 To workshop requirements and produce working Agile artefacts that would be used in the projects
3. Agile Coaching
Over an 8 week period we assisted teams with their practical implementation of Scrum focusing on the
Agile principles, practices, tools and techniques learnt during the Agile boot camp. The objective of this
phase was:
 To provide guidance and support to team members new to Agile
 To work through initial challenges in practice
 To facilitate the agile ceremonies such as Sprint Planning, Backlog grooming, Sprint reviews and
retrospectives) in Sprint 1
 To coach allocated Scrum Masters and Product Owners during Sprint 1 as well as handover
knowledge during Sprint 2
 To ensure adequate handover to the allocated Scrum Masters for each team to ensure that
TransUnion has the necessary skills and knowledge to own the process going forward at the end of
the engagement

4. technology enablement
Technology
Enablement
provides clients with
a pin-point analysis
of their functional
challenges.
The leading, independent management consulting firm in South Africa
Next Steps / Future Plans
IQ Business recommended the allocation of a skilled Scrum Master with 2-3 years of Agile experience
through contracting engagement, or a permanent hire to help with one of the teams. This will result in better
execution of work during sprints and will speed up development.
We also recommended the implementation of Agile coaching circles. Agile coaching circles are an
opportunity to share experiences within TransUnion and to learn from peers. Coaching circles allow for
spreading learning to avoid making mistakes already made by other teams, and to build stronger teams
through collaboration.
TransUnion will need to continue to educate business on Agile through hosting knowledge sharing sessions
with Business and Executives. This will bring stakeholders closer to the team and improve communication.
Other steps include introduction of Agile to other teams (already running and new).
We also recommended establishing Agile metrics for all teams (such as velocity, burn-down rates, time to
market, cost of delay, etc.). This will assist in the measuring of progress, performance and success.
On conclusion of the initial engagement, TransUnion sent through an additional 16 delegates to further Agile
training to further embed the learnings.
Critical Success Factors
Pre-requisites for a successful agile transformation for teams similar to the TransUnion transformation are
as follows:
 The roles of Scrum Master and Product Owner are performed by the right people
 The Scrum Master and Product Owner are preferably 100% dedicated to the team and have enough
time to perform their roles and responsibilities
 The Scrum team is co-located
 Members of the development team are dedicated to that team (100% allocated)
 The Development team is cross-functional
 The Development team has the opportunity in the environment to be self-managed and self-organised

5. technology enablement
Technology
Enablement
provides clients with
a pin-point analysis
of their functional
challenges.
The leading, independent management consulting firm in South Africa
Results, Value and Benefits
Included in the engagement was a report presented to the sponsor and key stakeholders which represented
the key observations, outcomes and recommendations.
Some notable results from the report are included below.
All teams improved their productivity with one of the teams increasing their average velocity by 78%
by the end of coaching.
All teams received positive feedback from stakeholders:
Hi Biase and Pavel
Word of thanks to you on this; this kind of feedback was non-existent 6 months ago…and Scrum and your
assistance with the adoption of it have played a very large role.
Cheers,
Donovan Lee

6. technology enablement
Technology
Enablement
provides clients with
a pin-point analysis
of their functional
challenges.
The leading, independent management consulting firm in South Africa
Some teams were able to complete their sprint commitments for the first time.
And some teams reduced the time they spent in meetings.
Why IQ Business?
Founded in 1998, IQ has developed its reputation for helping our clients overcome their
challenges. Although proudly South African, our perspective is international through the experience of our
people, our clients and our business partners. IQ Business is privately owned and fully empowered with a
level 3 BEE certification. IQ – Intelligence. Applied.