'It annoyed people': LV's Gavin Drescher on driving change through Agile IT

A core team met every day to ensure the transformation stayed on track

Presenting at the Computing IT Leaders Summit on Tuesday, Gavin Drescher, delivery director at insurance group LV, went over some of the basics in transforming an established business into an agile digital organisation, as well as describing a few innovative practices he and his colleagues developed as they sought to transform the venerable insurer into one better able to operate in a fast-changing environment.

There are three things you need to focus on when you're looking to make an organisation fit to face the future, Drescher said. In rough order of priority (rough because agile change is iterative) these are: context, people and technology.

Context

Context means understanding what you have, where you want to go, and what it's going to take to get you there. In LV's case, the goal four years ago was to improve the customer experience, break down internal silos, build connections with external organisations and shorten the at which opportunities could be exploited and novel products introduced by upgrading legacy systems and practices.

"We had to understand our business markets, the channels, what our products should be, the distribution and all the services that sit underneath that," said Drescher. "It sounds old school, but going through that detail was absolutely key to deciding what we were going to change. It put the foundations in place for a successful programme."

Four years later and the context, driven by the transformation's successes, is quite different. Time moves on and with it comes new expectations, opportunities and competition. Agile means always being prepared to make changes. "You need to constantly revisit the context," said Drescher.

People

While technology-driven change has never been linear, in previous eras timescales were long enough for people to act as if it were. This is no longer the case. Jobs and roles are in a constant state of flux. But many people are uncomfortable with exponential change; they find it difficult to cope with the sand shifting ever more rapidly beneath their feet. It's hard, for example, to feel proud of what you've achieved in the last three years and be simultaneously willing to rip it up and start again as the context changes. A big part of the 'people' part of the equation is helping them to be more adaptable.

At LV this need is met by recruiting newcomers with an aptitude for change, proactive training, and encouraging people to try a variety of roles. Drescher spoke of "smashing together" business and IT, offering internal apprenticeships to people from the business side and also encouraging IT professionals to try out different roles.

We've got testers doing analysts' work and architects doing coders' work

"We've got testers doing analysts' work and architects doing coders' work, and it's a really exciting place for everyone to be," he said, adding that many people feel liberated "when they feel they've been given permission to experiment".

Technology

On the technology side, LV tends to rely on trusted industry-standard suppliers and solutions, so long as they are flexible enough to adapt to future changes.

"It's not just about the technology itself, but it's also do you like working with these partners?" Drescher said, adding that choosing the right partners is "absolutely key" to successful business transformation.

See also: Interview: LV Insurance Group's Gavin Drescher - 'We needed to do something very different and quite radical'

Meeting every day

One of the more innovative management practices developed by Drescher and his colleagues flowed from LV's decision to keep management of the project in-house.

It annoyed people, but we kept it rolling, and it sent a really powerful message to everyone in the programme

To prevent the transformation from veering off course, a steering committee met every fortnight and a group of around 20 key stakeholders in the process (workstream leaders, testers, architects, scrum masters and senior leadership) convened every single working day for 18 months. Few people actively enjoy meetings and this was not easy to get off the ground, Drescher said.

"It annoyed people. But we kept it rolling, and it sent a really powerful message to everyone in the programme."

The daily meeting also enabled the various workstreams to foresee clashes of priorities and potential shortfalls ahead of time. Given the tight schedule, every team needed to deliver 100 per cent on their commitments or the plan could have been in jeopardy.

"If a particular team was struggling there was an ethos of 'put your hand up, and we'll all help you out.'" said Drescher. "It wasn't perfect but the meetings created a bond across the leadership."

There's a new wave of automation hitting big business and the public sector, and organisations that fail to prepare or implement properly will, literally, be left for dead.

Hear from end users and other organisations about how you can effectively automate the enterprise at Computing's Automation: streamlining your essential business processes IT Leaders' Forum.

To reserve your FREE place for the event on Wednesday 7 November, check out the dedicate IT Leaders' Forum website