AgileChennai.com Unleashing Agility: Triumphs Over Challenges in Legacy Modernization by Andrews Roberta Mary Lead Consultant, Thoughtworks

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Unleashing Agility :
Triumphs over Challenges in Legacy
Modernization
Andrews Roberta Mary R
Lead Consultant
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www.agilechennai.com

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About Me & My Role in spearheading the
Modernization project
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● A Lead Consultant with Thoughtworks
● Close to 1.5 decades of experience in the IT
industry
● Quality Evangelist, Iteration Manager, Project
Manager
● Currently working on setting up org test strategy
for an European travel industry giant
● TW QA Community Lead, Chennai
● True transformation journey on Enterprise
Modernization
www.linkedin.com/in/andrews-roberta-mary-r
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●One of the top insurers in Europe
●Claim creation and disbursement
system
●90s tech
●Multiple small fragile subsystems
●Modernized both the backend rule
engine and frontend of the
application
Legacy Project Landscape
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Waterfallish
Model
Developing
developers
Fatigued
and
Concerned
User base
Outdated
Technology
Low Performing
applications
Legacy Project Challenges
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●Outdated Tech - JSF
●Slow system
●Manual process - diary notes
●Workforce new to agile & tech
●Gaining Understanding of the
existing system
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Key Success Metrics
●Deployment Frequency (DF) -
●Lead Time to Changes (LTTC) -
●Change Failure Rate (CFR) -
●Mean Time To Recovery (MTTR) - Infra cost saving
by 20%
Adoption rate
improvement by
4x
5
Claim payment
time reduced
from 3mins to
30sec
Close to zero
major production
issues
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Agile Strategies
used for
Overcoming
Challenges
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Deep Dive
and
Understand
Fruitful
Iterations
Early &
Continuous
Testing
with
Feedback
Loops
Executive
Buy in
Adoption
Enablement
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Key Strategies Adopted for Overcoming Challenges
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Deep dive &
Understand
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Deep Dive & Understand
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● Documentation
● Business context and rules
● End user study
● Coming up with their list of pain points
● Reverse engineering
● Handshake points, Dependencies
● Risk assessment
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Fruitful Iterations
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Why? Examples
● Not just replace the system
● Performance
● Eliminating mundane and repetitive tasks
● Adding helpers/autofills to make forms easier
to use
● Adding notifications about changes in state of
concerned items in the system
● Showing insights and calculations for faster
decision-making
● Enabling easier access to frequently used
references/documents
● Introducing fraud identification and prevention
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Continuous Value Addition
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Early & Continuous
Testing
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Compare³
● User experience
● Data Projection - deduplication
● Ease of use
● Business calculation logics
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● Performance
● Contract test the integration
points
● Automation - Test pyramid,
stub, framework
Other Aspects
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Executive Buy in
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● Strangulation Plan
● Legacy subsystem retirement
roadmap
● Low hanging fruits
● Results in every iteration
● Quality metrics - revenue, complaints
● Infrastructure cost savings
Fiscal Prudence
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Adoption
Enablement
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● Pragmatism / Flexibility
● Resistance to change
● Everett Rogers’ innovation adoption life
cycle
● Most used features to be onboarded
first
● Before/after tests
● User surveys
Enable Adoption of the Modernized System
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Byproduct
Successes
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Client
Enablement
Java server faces
to React, Cobol to
Java
Agile
Transformation
30% quicker TTM
Great collaboration
and sense of
ownership through
RRs
Cross
functional
teams
Lead time
improvement by
20%
Continuous
Deployments
Quarterly
releases to
Weekly feature
releases
Delighted
Users &
Business
20 yrs record
history
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Byproduct successes through Agile Practices
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Q&A
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Thank you
Andrews Roberta Mary R
andrewsr@thoughtworks.com
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