Agile in the Banking Industry

Malaysia’s banking landscape poses formidable challenges, with constant change creating unpredictability in planning and action. Financial institutions must navigate complex interdependencies within their systems, requiring flexibility and agility to adapt effectively.

For one of our recent clients, the above-described VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous)  environment was very much at play. Addressing these challenges required the strategic alignment of people, processes, and technology. 

This case study delves into our client’s journey in exploring and adopting some new ways of working – both in how they did their work, and how they went about it to to overcome obstacles and drive innovation.

The Challenges We’ve Overcome:

Our client wanted to focus on confronting several challenges in embracing agile ways of working, from scaling and sharing the behaviors required in an agile culture across the organisation to addressing the need for more knowledge and awareness of these modern agile ways of working within their more than five thousand-person workforce. These challenges had  contributed to several adverse impacts:

• The limited adoption of modern agile ways of working was restricted to team levels, leading to inefficiencies at the enterprise level.
• Slow at addressing wider business demands hindered the spread of new working practices, exemplified by delays in initiatives like eChannels.
• The absence of an internal Center of Enablement had impeded the internal ownership and retention of knowledge and capability.
• The delayed establishment of Communities of Practice has resulted in insufficient support for fostering knowledge and awareness of modern agile ways of working.
• Inadequate setup for change-related communications has led to inconsistent and untimely messaging regarding modern agile Ways of Working, affecting its effective implementation and understanding across the organisation.

Despite these hurdles, the bank embarked on a transformative journey to overcome these obstacles and unleash the full potential of these modern, flexible ways of working to optimise it’s decision-making and execution.

Solutions: How we tailor our services to help our clients:

• Ekipa started by partnering with the company’s Strategic Management division to initiate and mentor three agile ways of working Pilot teams. 
• Over 45 team members underwent comprehensive training on agile practices, focusing on Scrum and Kanban, resulting in a deeper understanding of managing existing workflows and business requirements.
• Coaching efforts toward Product Owners facilitated a shift from a command-and-control leadership style to empowering and enabling team members, fostering heightened engagement, independence, and trust.
• All enhancements during the pilot phase were delivered in a timely manner, accompanied by robust stakeholder engagement and constructive feedback.
• Ekipa played a pivotal role in shifting the mindset of one of the working groups towards collaboration through empowering retrospectives during the creation of their Epic documents.
• Similarly, another team transitioned from non-sharing to openness and proactivity during crucial planning sessions, resulting in increased engagement and genuine alignment.
• Teams were coached on measuring performance using agile metrics, particularly focusing on post-release defect counts.
• Scrum masters received training and coaching on practical techniques to ensure continued support for the teams and effective implementation of modern agile practices.

Solutions: Impact – The Outcomes We Achieved:

• Enhanced team engagement, independence, and trust among members following coaching on agile practices.
• Timely delivery of all enhancements during the pilot phase, with robust stakeholder engagement and constructive feedback mechanisms in place.
• Shifted the mindset of the three pilot teams towards collaboration and proactive engagement through empowering retrospectives during Epic document creation.
• Key recommendations included establishing a Center of Enablement (CoE), creating a long-term Agility roadmap, initiating conversations with safety teams to align agile practices with compliance and risk management needs, and engaging change and communications teams to devise a strategy for promoting awareness of agile practices throughout the organisation. 

Testimonials

“I learned a lot of what Agile was, it turns out it was more than just a standup meeting, it was a great project management method, and as a developer, we have sometimes mistaken that we do not have to be good at project management because we are not leading a team or what not. But the reality is we are at least good at managing our tasks because when we can manage at least our tasks, it will affect the smoothness of the project delivery tremendously, and that will also halt the late night working session due to bad timeline planning.”

–  Developer

“This Way of Working enables developers to have good communication between stakeholders, product owners, and any entity related to the project. This makes development bridge the communication gap, allowing no miscommunication along the way, saving time by not developing something that does not meet expectations.” 

–  Developer

“The coach from Ekipa was an awesome coach, all lessons taught well with perfect preparation, great ice-breaking skills that break our silence when it happens sometimes. I have learned a lot.” 

–  Developer