As the COVID-19 global pandemic creates economic uncertainty for many insurers, taking advantage of the flexibility of Agile delivery can be an advantage for CIOs. Unlike traditional annual project-based funding, funding for Agile products is based on a long-term roadmap of capabilities. Roadmaps can be accelerated or slowed down based on business imperatives without going through a tedious financial estimation exercise.
Evaluate Key Priorities
Product roadmaps should be evaluated for priorities that can help insurers weather impacts from social distancing, business interruption, working from home, and other evolving factors. P/C carriers may consider accelerating a virtual inspection capability for claims to mitigate adjuster contact with homeowners, business owners, and other claimants. Customers may be more flexible in trying out new ways of interacting with insurers as they are faced with mandatory changes in their personal lives.
Engage Agile Teams to Define Roadmap Changes
Agile teams are closest to the work and will have the best ideas on how to reposition work based on feature and story backlogs as well as available capacity. Engage product owners to work with these teams to develop recommendations that support revamped priorities. Enabling teams to develop new sequencing is key to Agile effectiveness and will help prevent creating idle capacity. Stories and features that are currently in the pipeline may continue to be delivered while feature definition and refinement work can begin on higher priority items.
Leverage Agile to Keep a Customer Focus
As roadmap sequencing shifts, Agile helps ensure product owners and Agile teams will continue to focus on customer adoption of solutions. The highest priority in the Agile manifesto “…. is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.” In non-Agile delivery, customer satisfaction may be deprioritized in favor of other features that bring the promise of additional revenue or expense savings without regard for customer impact. Agile also encourages an ongoing customer feedback loop to refine features, achieving greater customer adoption and satisfaction.
Demonstrate Business Value
The transition to Agile delivery from traditional Waterfall models is predicated on delivering business value sooner. As business priorities evolve during crisis periods, CIOs can take the opportunity to demonstrate how Agile enables quicker business value realization with changing priorities.
- Project startup costs are eliminated. With dedicated Agile teams, resources are positioned to work on high-priority items without the administrative overhead of queuing up a project and identifying resources.
- Sprint and release content are variable. Existing sprint and release plans can be leveraged to incorporate new content without detailed project planning activity.
Although Agile isn’t a panacea for all delivery challenges, it provides a valuable tool as business needs evolve during crisis periods.
For a more in-depth look at Agile, and a rubric for insurers to evaluate their capabilities across multiple dimensions, please read Novarica’s research brief Agile Maturity Model for Insurers.
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