How “Scrums” and “Sprints” can - Actuaries Institute · Through IKW the team also meet a range of reporting requirements for a number of business units. Pre-Agile: What were

1

How “Scrums” and “Sprints” can

support the strategically focused

actuarial function

Darren Robinson, MLC Life Insurance, Chief Actuary

Maria Muir, Deloitte Partner, Agile Leader

2

Our topics today

• What is Agile?

• Key concepts and practises

• When to use Agile?

• A real-life example from MLC Life Insurance

• Benefits to your customers and teams

• How to get started?

• Q&A: How would you use Agile in your team?

3

What is Agile?

Copyright © 2017 Deloitte Touche Tomatsu. All rights reserved. 4

Agile values

5Copyright © 2017 Deloitte Touche Tomatsu. All rights reserved.

6

Iterative and incremental approach

Copyright © 2017 Deloitte Touche Tomatsu. All rights reserved.

What Agile is not – Myth busting


Agile for teams – Sprints and scrums


9

When to use Agile?

WaterfallAgile

Consider if there is value in continuing

Background

The Actuarial Information team are responsible for the MLC ‘Insurance Knowledge Warehouse’ (IKW) which

continues to evolve. It holds a vast amount of information including sales, claims and performance data

down to benefit and customer level.

Through IKW the team also meet a range of reporting requirements for a number of business units.

Pre-Agile: What were our drivers for change

• Team of busy individuals producing quality stuff, but not a high volume of it

• People risks – we had a number of single point dependencies within the team

• Distinct silos of experience and skills within the team

• Growing list of requests from the business – a team in demand!

10Copyright © 2017 MLC Limited. All rights reserved.

Agile-in-action @ MLC Life Insurance

Some of our key drivers included the ability to shine a light on what the team were doing and to deliver more items, more often through improved team effectiveness.


What we were hoping to achieve

Implementation

• Engaged an Agile Coach to work with the team – initial training, customisation of processes, on the job coaching

• Initial focus on Kanban board and Daily stand-ups to visualise work and bottlenecks

• Process to identify all items sitting with individuals and putting them into a ‘backlog’ to be prioritised

• Implemented Scrum team structure with 2-week sprint cycles

Ways-of-working

• Initial focus on ‘slowing down, to speed up’

• Used pairing of team members to reinforce cross-skilling

• 2-week sprints included Retrospective sessions to review, assess and adjust ways of working

• Each sprint includes a Planning session to prioritise and size what will be worked on next


Getting started with Agile


Key components of Agile

• Time-boxed sprints• Daily stand-up• Retrospective• Planning• Kanban board

• User stories and acceptance criteria• Backlog refinement• Scrum master• Product owner• Pairing of team members

Kanban board: Visualisation of work Daily stand-up in action!


Results achieved

Challenges and roadblocks experienced

• Identifying all items being worked on by individuals to form a backlog

• Prioritisation across multiple stakeholders and channels

• Educating stakeholders – No longer approaching their favourite team member, and not being given exact delivery time-frames when items are in backlog

Some of the key benefits so far

• Productivity uplift: Team are producing 2-3x more output

• Priorities understood and agreed

• Team able to focus on the right things – Removed most ad-hoc requests and distractions

• Pairing and cross-skilling has led to dramatic increases in individual team members capabilities

• Team spirit/engagement uplift

15

Let’s hear from the team

Copyright © 2017 MLC Limited. All rights reserved.

16

Things that worked well

• Visual board and Daily stand-ups: Transparent for all to see who is doing what.

• 2-week sprints: Short term goals, very motivating, delivering items more often.

• Prioritisation: Focusing all the effort of the team on the right things.

• Pairing: Significant uplift in skills across the team and reduced single point

Dependencies.

• Retrospectives: Opportunity to reflect and revise on our ways of working.

Things to consider

• Don’t be too strict: We haven’t stuck to a formula, rather we have ended up with an adaptation of Scrum and

Kanban that continues to evolve.

• Prioritisation: Need a meaningful way of deciding what gets prioritised.

• Stakeholders need to be taken on the journey: Explain the new ways of working and promote the benefits.

Explain how they can help you prioritise their requests.

• Pairing: Rotate to allow all team members to get exposure to everything. This includes pairing experienced

with inexperienced, but also experienced with experienced, and inexperienced with inexperienced.

• Agile coach: Bringing in a quality coach to provide on the job coaching and help drive adoption of new

ways of working is essential.

17

Lessons and recommendations

Copyright © 2017 MLC Limited. All rights reserved.

Benefits of Agile ways of working


How to get started?


How would you use Agile in your team?

20

Q&A Discussion

Documents

How “Scrums” and “Sprints” can - Actuaries Institute · Through IKW the team also meet a range of reporting requirements for a number of business units. Pre-Agile: What were