[Ed note: For more on advanced Agile at insurers, pre-register for Novarica’s upcoming webinar on February 20.]
A mature Agile delivery model has financial, organizational, and cultural implications that can reshape the entire organization. This can include flattening management hierarchies, restructuring budget processing, and shifting the role of project management offices (PMOs).
The Novarica Agile Maturity Model for Insurers (NAMMI) provides a rubric for insurers to evaluate their capabilities and organizational models. The model describes insurers’ journey through the stages of Agile: Emerging, Evolving, and Transforming. Here are some considerations for carriers as they advance their Agile practices:
Project to Product
A significant trend for many insurers is to organize IT efforts around products rather than projects. Projects are transient, with a defined beginning and end, while products are thought of as durables.
A product at an insurer could be a system or business capability. It could also be a specific system like a core administration system, portal, or a data warehouse. Products can also include business capabilities, which are part of a business system or may involve several systems.
A key concept of product alignment is that the same team supports the product across its entire life cycle, eliminating the distinctions between development, maintenance, and support. This team is often led by a product manager, whose performance is tied to the overall success of the product.
Organization Implications
The transition to an Agile delivery approach can provide the impetus for IT organizations to rethink the traditional functional alignment. IT transformational efforts can be accelerated when the business and IT have the same goals and are closely aligned. This can result in jobs being redefined to broaden responsibilities and ensure proper incentives.
Measuring a product’s success can also be challenging for carriers. Projects have been measured around cost, productivity, schedule, scope, financial return, and code quality, while Agile renders many traditional metrics unusable.
Exception to Agile
Agile isn’t a cure-all. Certain organizations or specific technology investments do not lend themselves to Agile. Sometimes the business isn’t ready to become a dedicated partner. When business partners are not available in the day-to-day delivery, often the project reverts towards a Waterfall or iterative development model. Also, large-scale financial system replacements are not ideal candidates for Agile, as rigorous testing cycles are required during the comprehensive testing phase.
To learn more about advanced Agile at insurers, read Novarica’s latest brief, Agile Maturity Model for Insurers.
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