Highlights of the ING’s Agile Transformation Journey
Changing the working style with Agile paradigm maynot be a straight-forward decision for the non-tech organizations. Even it is not easy for software companies to setup an agile culture. It is not easy to change the habits. But, I think “being agile” is not just a choice or decision, but an obligation.
Although there are many stories of how to be/adopt agile for the software/tech companies, it is nice to have such good examples on different industries, like banking & finance. Let’s be enlightened by the ING’s agility adventure :)
There are useful points in the interview with the ING executives (CIO and CTO) by McKinsey. I just want to summarize the highlights of this interview here. First of all it is worth to mention that they inspired with a model used at various technology companies, which they then adapted to their own business. Being agile is not just about changing the IT department or any other function on its own.
The summary of the transformation process by Bart Schlatmann is:
We gave up traditional hierarchy, formal meetings, over-engineering, detailed planning, and excessive “input steering” in exchange for empowered teams, informal networks, and “output steering.”
The motivation for the transformation is the customer behavior & expectations not directly the money!
The reason is not directly related with the financial results but the customer behavior.
Customer expectations were being shaped by digital leaders in other industries, not just banking.
Main improvements with “Being Agile”
- Time to market
- Boosted employee engagement
- Increased productivity
- Reduced impediments and handovers
- Improved client experience
What is Agility for ING?
“Agility is about flexibility and the ability of an organization to rapidly adapt and steer itself in a new direction. It’s about minimizing handovers and bureaucracy, and empowering people. The aim is to build stronger, more rounded professionals out of all our people. “
4 Pillars of the Organizational Transformation
- Cross-platform and self organized teams
- Clarity around the new roles and governance
- Continuous delivery in IT and DevOps
- New people model
As it can be seen, the 3 of 4 important elements are mostly related with the people. It is obvious that the Agile transformation is centered on people and the mindset, not only with some defined process. However the process, frameworks and the best practices are the starting points for the evolution :)
What matters is how people deal withknowledge. A big part of the transformation has been about ensuring there is a good mix between different layers of knowledge and expertise.
“Being agile is not just about changing the IT department or any other function on its own. The key has been adhering to the “end-to-end principle” and working in multidisciplinary teams, or squads, that comprise a mix of marketing specialists, product and commercial specialists, user-experience designers, data analysts, and IT engineers — all focused on solving the client’s needs and united by a common definition of success.
IT and commercial colleagues sit together in the same buildings, divided into squads, constantly testing what they might offer our customers, in an environment where there are no managers controlling the handovers and slowing down collaboration.”
We have spent an enormous amount of energy and leadership time trying to role model the sort of behavior — ownership, empowerment, customer centricity — that is appropriate in an agile culture.
Additionally, in order to have a clear strategy and an agile mindset, they analyzed the best practices and adopted them in an open office with open minded people, evolved into transparent management, re-positioned the employees, measured the results with a neutral outsider, setup more flat organization with squads, and they are still evolving with making mistakes and learn. I am looking forward their progress and the new results :)
