Credit services group Experian is renowned for the speed at which it brings new products to market. John Finch, the company’s UK development and delivery director, says the agility comes from a mixture of having the right governance, processes, technical architecture and ­- most crucially -­ people. “People strategy is at the heart of our technology strategy,” he says.

Experian actively seeks and develops IT staff with strong relationship and interpersonal skills, and IT staff are involved at every stage of the product lifecycle. “My people sit on all the different divisional boards and product groups, so we are directly embedded in the business. And we are involved directly in discussions with both product marketing people and external customers.” he says.

With the right people on board, Finch says the agile processes he has put in place can flourish. “We start with a requirements-gathering process, which is about getting all parties in a room together. It’s a bit like a Papal election ­- I shut them in until some smoke appears,” he says.

And with requirements specified, Experian kicks in its MoSCoW (must have, should have, could have, won’t have) process. “We go through all this stuff and weed out what we don’t really need,” says Finch.

The goal is speed. “I demand my team goes from concept to value in 90 days. So we say to the business, if we can only give you five key things, what would they be? Then we sprint, sprint, test, deliver. Every morning we have a half-hour meeting, where everyone gets together to ensure everything is on track,” he says.

“Of course, it is not always possible to deliver an entire project in 90 days because we have some very large developments, but we break things down into chunks.”
Underpinning Experian’s agile processes is a service-oriented architecture (SOA) which allows products to be developed ever faster.

“We now have hundreds of core components available as services to be called upon within our SOA,” says Finch. “We have also built some proprietary technology that allows us to assemble these services using a graphical tool.”

He says the agile approach to development and delivery allows the company to stay ahead: “Because we are bringing new products and product functionality to the market on a regular basis, it means our competitors are always chasing us rather than setting the agenda."