Transforming software development across geographic locations in a large company is difficult. But Nationwide Insurance found a way to successfully implement more than forty agile teams in multiple locations around the United States using their internal Application Development Center. Sara McClintock explains what worked for Nationwide: using Scrum practices, including creating standard work, and lean techniques, using tools such as A3s. Sara provides insight into some of the challenges Nationwide faced and shares some things they should have avoided. With the continued success that Nationwide has experienced in the Application Development Center in the past three years, the company has decided to continue with an Enterprise Transformation that will move their IT organization into full agile software development as they plan, build, and run projects across the company. The goal is to increase productivity, quality, and speed to market using Scrum, XP, lean, and CMMI practices and techniques.

1. AW9
Concurrent Session
11/13/2013 3:45 PM
"Transforming the Large
Organization"
Presented by:
Sara McClintock
Nationwide Insurance
Brought to you by:
340 Corporate Way, Suite 300, Orange Park, FL 32073
888 268 8770 904 278 0524 sqeinfo@sqe.com www.sqe.com

2. Sara McClintock
Nationwide
Sara McClintock, IT Director at Nationwide Insurance, has been
specializing in transforming the ways development teams create and
manage software for one of the largest insurance companies. Sara has
helped to scale Agile across multiple locations, including the start up in
their Des Moines Iowa location. Nationwide is leading the industry in Agile
Transformation using Scrum, Extreme Programming, Lean and was one of
the first companies to become CMMI Level 3 certified using Agile practices
and techniques. She has over 20 years of experience in the IT industry
and is very passionate about Agile development and loves to share the
journey that Nationwide has been on.

3. How to scale in a large
organization, across
multiple locations
Sara McClintock
Director, IT Application Development

4. Sara McClintock
mcclins2@nationwide.com
! Director,
IT Applications, Application Development Leader
(ADL)
! Certified Scrummaster (CSM)
! Leader in transformation for Nationwide Des Moines site
! Nationwide s liaison for Iowa Lean Consortium and Agile
Iowa
About Me

5. About Nationwide

6. " Began in 2004
" Grassroots, practitioner led,
" Localized Agile processes
" Each saw success, but had limited
impact on the overall enterprise
Agile
" Lack of communication between
Agile teams
Grassroots Beginning
Attacking the Problem with Agile
4

7. " Began in 2008
" Harvested Agile best practices
" Nationwide s leading Agile activists
together for first time
" Focused on Scrum and XP practices
" Created Nationwide s 21 Agile Tea
Leaves
" Created a common understanding but
still lacked the ability to move the
entire organization in the same
direction
Enterprise Agile
Agil
e
5

8. Our Transformation Timeline
2011 Tech Con
2008 began ADC with introduced
6 lines
2010 Introduced 2nd
location in Des Moines, IA
WHAT
2012 Des Moines
location grew from 1
line to 6 lines
2012 reported 0
critical defects
in 101 releases
Oct. 2013 opened 3rd
location in AZ
2013 32 lines in both
locations with 232
Associates and 161
Contractors
Q4 2013 committed to
total of 48 lines
6

10. HOW?
HOW?
HOW?

11. Step 1 - Visual Workflow
9

12. Visual Management is the glue holding together the
management and development systems. Visual controls
allow everyone to see the progress of the work and
allow immediate feedback and corrective action into the
system.
Why make things visual?
" Encourages go see
management
" Prevents information hiding
" Common understanding
" Drives accountability
" Focuses the organization
on the important measures
Visual Management
10

13. Step 2 - Foundational
Educating our staff, changing
our management philosophy,
and setting the stage for
continuous improvement
11

14. Standard Work
# Standard work for
managers and staff
# Innovation accelerator
# Foundation for our
Continuous Improvement
efforts
# Set the organization up to
shift from fire fighting to
fire prevention
12

15. Daily Accountability
Tier 1
• Local Agile Teams
• Daily Standup Meeting
• Local Team Topics
Tier 2
• Director-Level
• Daily Standup with Team Leads
• Operational and Improvement Topics
Tier 3
• VP-Level
• Daily Standup with Directors
• Operational, Improvement, Trends
All meetings utilize a Visual Management System (VMS) to drive
discussions and assignments. Each meeting also serves to ensure
the VMS is updated and accurate.
13

16. Step 3 – Move Forward
Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement!
# Focused on Problem Solving
# Empowerment of Staff
# A3s as our Improvement Currency
Title: Improve the Accuracy of Quality
Center Incident Recording
Submitter:
Ravi Taneja
CIO (or SVP):
James Korcykoski
Team Members: Amber Barker, Terry Buckendahl, Joel Esplana, Matt Forschner, Amy Gould, Gary
Title: Release Management “4-2-1”
Holloway, Mandy McNutt, Bob Meikle, Rachel Reeder, Kathy Weatherman
Problem Statement: Application Releases were causing unacceptable levels of adverse customer impact
as measured in Release related incidents (PO’s, P1’s) and Defects.
Goals
57.14%
Prior State
1-Jan
1-Feb
1-Dec
1-Mar
1-Nov
1-Jul
Before
1-Oct
22.40%
1-Jun
The estimated cost for handling the inaccurate incidents tickets is $192 K to $240 K annually.
Indirect costs include a negative impact on providing effective customer service and, so,
reduced customer satisfaction (Customer Love).
100% Improvement in
Work Stream Accuracy
1-Sep
Are requests for new work (not actually incidents)
Should have been resolved by front-line support (“Escaped First Time Finals”)
Are incorrectly prioritized
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
1-Aug
The Quality Center Support Team receives over 3.5 times the volume of incidents, compared
to the rest of its Business Solution Area. This work stream includes incidents that:
1-May
Problem Statement
Goal Exceeded
155% actual improvement
48% variation reduction
Final process is stable
Results statistically verified
at 95% confidence level
After
Incorrectly
Prioritized
3%
Defect Free
23%
77% of Work Stream Defective
Over half of work stream are requests
for new work
Multiple defects possible on same
incident
Countermeasures
Conducted formal calibration of front-line staff
Provided direct feedback, coaching, and training to front-line staff
Rerouted defective work stream components back to originator
Reviewed/revised Knowledge Base entries
Implementation
Root Cause of Problem:
Inadequate training of front-line
staff
Generated formal
Implementation Plan to
define approach, identify
roles and responsibilities,
and track progress
Production was inconsistent across multiple offices and Business Solution Areas (BSA).
• Code changes, testing, and scope modifications continued late into release cycles which added risk to the
success of a release.
• Code freezes were not tracked for all applications.
• Request For Change (RFC ) details were either late or incomplete. Less than 10% of RFC’s were in n ‘Ready
to Approve’ status prior to the implementation of a Release.
• Project schedules planned for testing and defect fixes to continue thru the week of a Release.
• No awareness into late changes or coordination of cross-project or cross-solution area risks and issues.
Absence of direct feedback loop
Defective Knowledge Base
Lack of routine performance
monitoring
• Identified quality checkpoints for release implementation – Scope, Code and Release Freeze.
• Implemented a “4-2-1” release governance process.
• Enabled Exception Reporting to give BSA’s better decision making tools.
• Upgraded Release Management Enterprise Tool (Webster) to automate the solution.
Implementation: Phased Approach (process and tool upgrade) started with January 2011 Application
Release thru March 2011. Metrics were collected with the roll out and were utilized to create a rolling 13
month trend beginning with 2011 Release data.
4 Weeks
Analysis: 2011 Incident & Defect Data
Scope Lock
2 Weeks
1 Week
Code Freeze
Release Freeze
Inside of 4 weeks
100
80
Inside of 2 weeks
Inside of 1 week
• RFC’s targeted for Release
are due
• App Dev and Testing
continues
• Code/Config Change to
resolve defects
• Ind. Performance Testing
120
• User Acceptance Testing
• Go / No-Go meeting
• Individual & Mixed
Performance Testing
• RFC Processing
• Release Readiness
Checkpoint is held
• App Event Monitors are
modified or created
with Cabinets
• RFC’s are approved
• QPIR meeting is held
• AES RMT audits code
moves and release data
• Implementations begin
60
40
20
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
0
NWIT
1.0-11
NWIT
2.0-11
NWIT
3.0-11
NWIT
4.0-11
NWIT
5.0-11
Release Related P0s
NWIT
6.0-11
NWIT
7.0-11
Release Related P1s
NWIT
8.0-11
NWIT
9.0-11
NWIT
NWIT
NWIT
10.0-11 11.0-11 12.0-11
Release Related Defects (All)
1.0-11 2.0-11 3.0-11 4.0-11 5.0-11 6.0-11 Jan-Jun 2011 7.0-11 8.0-11 9.0-11 10.0-11 11.0-11 12.0-11 Jul-Dec 2011
Follow Up and Outcomes
exasperated by:
Goals / Objective: Improve the success of the NI & ACS Application Releases by reducing Release related
incidents (PO’s, P1’s) and Defects.
Solution Overview:
Prior State: Application Release Planning, Building, Packaging, and Deployment of software into
140
Work
Escaped
Requests 6% First Time
Finals
46%
16%
6%
Analysis
Submitter:
Sandra Bowman
CIO (or SVP):
Mark Gaetano
Team Members: Julia Ashley, Lara Bush, Ralph Caldwell, Tim Gensure,
Elaine Heim, and Dwight Steward
Continuing monthly team meetings to ensure
on-going process compliance
Process improvements verified and reported-out
monthly by Quality Leadership representative
Front-line staff calibration continuing quarterly
Actual savings audited ($22 K confirmed - since
initiative completed)
Release Related P0s
Release Related P1s
Release Related Defects (All)
7
14
64
2
35
112
1
14
86
3
53
119
Release Related P0s
Release Related P1s
Release Related Defects (All)
8
15
72
1
35
134
2011
Average
3.4
23.8
92.6
4
28
98
1
14
78
6
13
70
2
32
67
1.0-12 2.0-12 3.0-12
3
5
86
4
23
137
2
34
41
3
10
108
5
18
84
2012
Average
3.0
20.7
88.0
2
33
117
3
20
87
Follow Up:
• Conducted Feedback Sessions with BSA Release Teams in 4th Qtr 2011.
• Completed Phase 1 (Voice of the Customer) Lean/Six Sigma Continuous Improvement Project (4/12).
• Implement recommendations from Phase 1 in 2nd half of 2012.
14

17. Visual Controls and Metrics
Visually represent
information for
consumption at the
source
Roll up metrics
to support
continuous
improvement –
not evaluate
staff
15

18. Step 4 – Integration
16

19. Results
Critical and High Defects
2009
2010
Contributing to a
positive
downward trend
for End User
Down Time
2011
High and critical
defects in a 4year positive
trend…
2012
Down%Time%by%Month%With%Linear%Trend%
Sep$ Oct$ Nov$ Dec$ Jan$ Feb$ Mar$ Apr$ May$ Jun$ Jul$ Aug$ Sep$ Oct$ Nov$ Dec$ Jan$ Feb$ Mar$ Apr$ May$
2010$
2011$
2012$
17

20. A story about what s
possible when
instead of managing
people you empower
them to define and
continuously improve
their work every day.
The Culture
18

21. ! Executive
and Leader support
! A
plan….
! Embedded culture for training and
education
! Resources with the right mindset
! Change the culture
Key Success Factors
and Opportunities

22. Delivery%
Effec=veness%
Workforce%
Strategy%&%
Logis=cs%
Leadership%%
ADC%Roadmap%
Technology%
Domain%Prac=ces%
WHAT S NEXT….
BSA%
Engagement%

23. Net 13 Line increase in less than a year
Committed
Lines
forecasted
to grow from
32 to 48
lines by Q4
2014
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
# of
Lines
10
5
0
Q3 2013 Q4 2013 Q1 2014 Q2 2014 Q3 2014 Q4 2014
ADC Projected Growth
21

24. Let s Go to Gemba!
22

25. Sara McClintock
mcclins2@nationwide.com
Thank You!