1. Scaling Software Agility
Rent-A-Center is scaling agile across their enterprise with AgileCraft
Rent-A-Center, Inc. (NASDAQ: RCII)
is one of the largest rent-to-own
operators with more than 4,500 stores
across all brands in the US, Mexico,
and Puerto Rico with $3.1 billion in
sales in 2014. The scale of the
company is reflected in the size of its
technology organization, which
consists of over 300 people across
multiple continents using a mix of
development methodologies and
software tools.
THE CHALLENGE
Because Rent-A-Center (RAC) doesn’t
manufacture its own products and the
items it rents out depreciate while in
customers’ homes, effectively
managing the supply chain (and the
associated IT investment required)
has a direct impact on their financial
performance. Suffering from long
delays, missed dependencies, and
hard to manage communication
channels, RAC management were no
longer surprised with projects falling
behind and the associated lack of
transparency into schedules.
Looking ahead at the critical projects
on their roadmap, RAC knew there
was a better way. One project stood
out as a perfect test-run of their
newly proposed agile development
methodology – the GEAR (Global
Enterprise Automated
Replenishment) implementation.
Needed to support a change in
RAC’s supply chain strategy from a
manufacturer-to-store model to a
distribution center-to-store model,
GEAR would help RAC understand
the movement of goods through its
distribution channels and the
resultant impact on the company's
financials.
At the program and portfolio level,
RAC's managers also wanted to
increase their visibility into the many
ongoing software projects across the
business. Historically, disparate
teams using legacy methodologies
and diverse tool sets had created an
opaque culture that prevented
organizational alignment.
Rob Tayne
Sr. Manager
IT Product Management
Rent-A-Center
"We were looking for a
platform that would enable
alignment, transparency,
and communication
between the business
and development teams.
We were able to use
AgileCraft as our single
system of record, keeping
everyone aligned around
our common goals.
The metrics and views
spanned all the levels we
needed to manage,
starting from the whole
enterprise, with
breakdowns to portfolios,
programs and team levels.“

2. They hoped that bringing Lean and
Agile methods to the IT team would
better align the business, shorten
times to delivery, and improve
business results.
"The flexibility Rent-A-Center offers to
our customers was missing from how
we managed our software projects,"
noted Rob Tayne, RAC's Sr. Manager
of IT Product Management. “We knew
that our development processes would
benefit from flexibility and result in a
quicker response to the changing
needs of the business.”
With this in mind, RAC began a
journey to leverage agile and
fundamentally change the way they
built software.
THE SOLUTION
RAC recognized that GEAR would
only succeed if the IT inventory
management team worked in
alignment with the business. It was
crucial that they coordinate their
strategy and activities in order to meet
some very challenging deadlines. It
was also critical that the development
team work only on the most important
projects and features that had the
most impact on the overall business
strategy and financial performance.
Having the right agile solution to
support this (and other) projects and
provide transparency was critical.
After exploring the market leading
products, a team that included top IT
leadership and product development
managers chose AgileCraft. "We
were looking for a platform that would
enable alignment, transparency, and
communication between the
business and development teams,"
said Tayne. "We were able to use
AgileCraft as our single system of
record, keeping everyone aligned
around our common goals.
The metrics and visualizations
spanned all the levels we needed to
manage, starting from the enterprise,
with breakdowns to portfolio,
program and team levels.“
THE RESULTS
Using AgileCraft, the GEAR
development team delivered the
application on schedule and on
budget, a major success for the IT
team. The application achieved its
business goals, increasing RAC's
purchasing power and resulting in
significant cost savings.
The application met its technical
goals, too. With native integrations
to both JIRA and HP Quality Center,
the highly visible success of this
critical software is enabling RAC to
expand agile practices throughout
the company, even to parts of the
organization not using AgileCraft at
the team level.
What’s Next? “Things are now
starting to open up with AgileCraft
from an innovation perspective” said
Gary Peek, RAC’s Vice-President of
IT Business Solutions. “We plan to
extend the footprint of AgileCraft
beyond the IT and executive teams
and bring in our extended store
network to contribute ideas right in
the AgileCraft platform – and then
measure how the impact of their
ideas directly improve the
performance of our business.”
“Things are now starting to
open up with AgileCraft
from an innovation
perspective. We plan to
extend the footprint of
AgileCraft beyond the IT
and executive teams and
bring in our extended store
network to contribute ideas
right in the AgileCraft
platform – and then
measure how the impact of
their ideas directly improve
the performance of our
business.”
Gary Peek
Vice President
IT Business Solutions
Rent-A-Center
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