Introduction of Agile IT and Business Transformation into XYZ Bank Elabor8 Lunch and Learn Brisbane Meetup Introduction Agile into business - De Bono's Six Thinking Hats® Workshop Tuesday, 27 June 2017, Robert Bratusa Brant, BS Group

1. Elabor8 Lunch and Learn Brisbane Meetup
Introduction Agile into business - De Bono's Six Thinking Hats® Workshop
Tuesday, 27 June 2017, Robert B Brant, BS Group
Introduction of Agile IT and Business Transformation into XYZ Bank
Your Task
You are part or the advisory group which is providing professional internal support to the steering
committee. The steering committee needs additional information to support their decision-making
process. The Advisory Group has to provide Quick Written Feedback about the introduction of Agile
practice into First Home Buyers Mortgage Product – My Own Home. Choose one – the most likely
scenario. You have 10 minutes of gross time including internal team introduction.
Please use the different sources of information available including:
- Information previously provided visually and orally in the presentation.
- This document.
- The Internet (you can use your mobile phone).
- Your previous experience and professional knowledge.
- Please state in the case that you need to use relevant assumptions.
You have to present the summary of your results in 5 minutes presentation to other groups.
1. Situation, Strategic Alignment and Stakeholder Management
XYZ bank would like to Introduce an Agile initiative into their first home buyers mortgage product –
My Own Home. Introducing the Agile initiative into important business segments is a challenge for an
agile evangelist and executive team in every organisation which would like to use this as a flagship
project and increase the level of agile practices throughout all business segments.
The executive team recently recognised additional opportunities in data as additional valuable
corporate assets. Based on an internal survey including the whole leadership team (management,
senior management and executive team), their latest view is as follows:
▪ 33% believe they measure the benefits of each type of information asset.
▪ 24% see that the bank quantifies the financial value of bank information assets.
▪ 22% believe that bank information is well catalogued (inventoried) and defined.
▪ 11% believe that the bank does not regard information as a kind of asset.
▪ 10% know that the bank group monetize information asset by bartering them with
professional association and data pooling scheme.

2. 2. Agile Business Initiatives, Digital Transformation and Change Management
Agile was born with 2001 “Agile Manifesto” which linked lean business techniques, Kaizen (constant
improvement), and the Six Sigma concepts. It started to spread in IT and in particular; the software
development industry. Agile process management with sprints ranging from 4 weeks to as short as 1
week became popular alternatives in comparison to traditional software development life cycles
which take months or quarters to produce a new iteration of the next version of the software product.
Digital transformation has a strong influence on the majority of other industries, and agile process
management became feasible as an industry agnostic approach. Companies started to introduce
pieces of agile principles across all business functions.
The bank initially started to use agile in software development for mobile devices. Based on their good
experience, they introduced agile practice into additional parts of IT software development, but the
core systems still use waterfall methodology.
3. Target Product: First Home Buyers Mortgage Product – ‘My Own Home.'
The bank would like to start an agile business initiative in the home loan mortgage segment. We
recently reported the decrease of the first home buyers shares in the total number of mortgages. We
have to perform additional analysis, why the independent mortgage brokerage is acquiring a share of
the subsidiary mortgage brokage subsidiary, which is part of the Group. We would like to combine
agile in software development and agile business initiatives.
4. Challenges by Business Functions
Digital marketing is overtaking advertising in traditional media, as it is more efficient and uses
targeting advertisements. The bank realised the internet banking doesn’t have proper UX design. They
didn’t anticipate the high growth of access from mobile devices. The bank is selling through 4 major
channels: digital channels, branches, mortgage broker subsidiary and partnered mortgage brokers. In
the sales business function, the plan is to decrease response time to clients enquiries, improve the
quality of responses and decrease sales cycles through all points of sale. Operations become more
lean and agile with better operational support as a result of process improvements and the
introduction of complex data science tools as part of the ordinary day to day business activities.
Instead of annual performance reviews and payments of an annual bonus a few months after the end
of financial year, the Executive Director of Human Development would like to introduce the bonus
payment after the end of the project or biannually or quarterly. He is also keen to implement one of
the latest trends to become an agile working environment, where traditional offices are replaced with
multiple hot desks and open ocean floor space layout, to improve internal communication. The new
group of employees will use notebooks instead of fixed workstations. The additional bank plans to
save the office space, and decrease square meters per employee. The bank will encourage employees
to spend more time with (potential) clients and also introduce a work from home option. The Chief of
Cyber Security sees the additional technical challenges to provide the same level of IT security when
employees remotely access some of the internal IT systems.