2018
About the customer – a German insurance company
Insurance company X, based in Wiesbaden, is one of the largest insurers in Germany for private and corporate customers. The company has 14,125 employees with a turnover of 16,133 billion Euro. When I started work for this company, the situation was as follows:
Initial situation:
- The Product Owner was from insurance company X and had left three months after the start of the project
- I built a new Development Team with internal employees together with employees from external companies: Company I, Company A (partially in Slovenia), Company E and Company O
- The Office was an open space environment
- A new IT Infrastructure and Software environment OPENTEXT WEM / PORTAL / DELIVERY had been established
- There was no profound knowledge of OPENTEXT WEM / PORTAL / DELIVERY – and only theoretical knowledge based on two days of training for company I, company E and company A
- No profound knowledge of backend-for-frontend (it was also not clear who could handle it)
- No infrastructure assigned to the project
- Inadequate collaboration within the Development Team
- The Development Team, unfortunately, did not practice a proactive approach, lacked decision-making enthusiasm and there was an unwillingness to take responsibility. Furthermore, there was no engagement and a lack of motivation to achieve something
- As the Product Owner had left the insurance company X, there was inadequate communication with the client
- There was no experience in the project with fix budget and fix dates.
- As we were three months without a Product Owner, the Scrum Master took over the role of the Product Owner
Results after six months:
We, as a Team, had achieved the following:
- Packages 1 through 3 had been completed
- New WCMS on OpenText WEM 16.2 had been set up (including training for editors)
- Complete content migration. Style had been adjusted
- Old applications were running on Broker Portal
- New applications Material Order and Media Library with decoupling were functional (incl. Angular training)
- Corresponding Customer Infrastructure has been established – all stages
- Customer test was carried out
- Package 4 was completed together with the department (packages 1 to 3)
- Team Performing Stage has been achieved
- The change management process for team and customer were implemented
- Go Live 4.08.2018
All customer expectations were met.
In order to make the project a success, I, as the Scrum Master (partially Product Owner), often had to put in overtime for the project, worked on weekends and during my vacation. Below is a detailed description per month from early January to late June.
Customer Expectations on broker portal
Package 1 to 3
The guidelines for Media Library and Material Ordering were observed
State of Development Team at the beginning (January 2018)
Topic: Team Dynamics
Challenges:
- Collaboration within the project team (Company I, Company E, Company A)
- Collaboration within the core team of insurance company X (department, ZI HH, ZI WIE)
- Internal communication at customer level
- Know-How transfer
- Establishing a team environment
- No knowledge of Scrum
- The attitude of the team members was not as desired
Actions:
- Scrum training for Team and Product Owner
- User Stories/Tasks on the Team Board
- Daily Scrum
- Release plan with a clear understanding of product value
- Workshops (Design Company O, ordering materials, documentation)
- Clarification of the agile process with the Product Owner
- Training on the job for the Development Team
- Improve collaboration through scrum events
- Team building events with and without the customer
Lessons learned:
- The employees in the project were not ready and prepared to collaborate and work on sprint goals
- Even in stressful situations, employee satisfaction should be kept in mind to achieve the sprint goals
Topic: Migration
Challenges:
- Migration from Company A Lab environment to sandbox
- OpenText rights on Linux / WEM
- WEM DB rights
- Backup was organized at Company A
- Adaptation of operating scripts
- Company X sandbox was not prepared for development
- Missing rights, therefore log-in problems
- Customer knowledge at WEM was low
Actions:
- Permanent communication with the appropriate Company X infrastructure.
- A step-by-step approach to finishing the environment
Lessons learned:
A checklist for the next steps will be created.
Topic: Administration
Challenges:
- Internal accounts
- Materials
- RasNet access
- Pin walls
- Laptop / VM / desktops
- Requirements and controlling for local environments like Visual Studio, Putting, FileZilla etc.
- Missing documentation
- Company X ordering process
Actions:
- Improved communication with the internal department has been reached and we have involved them in our process
Lessons learned:
- Account creation takes about three days. You can also get an ID after three days
Topic: Templates / MVP
Challenges:
- Creation of templates: start page, navigation, channels, Content Pages (1 column full width, 2 columns, 3 columns)
- The presentation of MVP for the Broker Portal turned out to be a disaster because everything was programmed in HTML code, was not flexible and was inaccessible for employees without programming skills
Actions:
- Creating a new concept for building WEM templates and comparison with an analogue of the project in company X
Lessons learned:
- Lack of practical experience in WEM
Topic: Media library
Challenges:
- Preparation of presentation to make a decision
- Decision YouTube vs. MovingImages
- The decision process within Company X took too long. Agreement within several departments
Actions:
- Frequent follow-up among decision-makers
Topic: Restricted Area / SSO
Challenges:
- A task in an unknown area
- Identifying tasks and problems
- Division of tasks
- Set priorities
- There was no detailed methodological knowledge of how to solve problems. There was just a general idea.
Actions:
- Brainstorming to find solutions
Lessons learned:
- The Development Team has a hard time summarizing their thoughts and identifying weaknesses
Topic: Migration Script
Challenges:
- Trying the migration script on the Company A environment
- Migration planning
- Making a decision regarding an automated migration
- Missing permissions on the part of Company X to work on Company A’s environment
Actions:
- Configure and use an external account for remote work in Company A environment
Lessons learned:
- Company A shows a willingness to support us
- Company E did not know of this
Topic: Reflection committee and steering committees
Challenges:
- Preparate and execute different committees
- The role of the Product Owner was temporarily transferred to the Scrum Master
Actions:
- Investment in time-management
- Balanced planning of activities for both roles
Lessons Learned:
- Never mix two functions within one person
Topic: Web and UX design
Challenges:
- Cooperation with Design Company O
- New navigation
- Wireframes for media library
- Wireframes for VM
- Time-consuming and challenging implementation of the new Design Company O requirements
- The department is having a hard time getting into the work process
- Coordination with Design Company O is tedious
Actions:
- Close collaboration with customer and Design Company O
- Involve Company O in Planning, Review and Daily Sessions
- Permanent exchange of knowledge and tasks
- Invite a team member of Design Company O into the Development Team
Topic: Search
Challenges:
- SolR setup and configuration
- Product ROL is poorly integrated into the RUV sandbox.
- There is no knowledge of SolR available
- An internal employee is in permanent contact with OpenText
Actions:
- Systematic knowledge transfer from internal employee
- Learning curve for Company A
Lessons learned:
- The environment is out of date and needs to be built up with new product patches.
The goals for the “Broker Portal” project have been achieved:
Organization
- Broker Portal: Go Live
- Creation of a real cultural awareness within different departments
- Helping employees and stakeholders understand and enact Scrum and empirical product development
- Causing change that increases productivity
Product Owner
- Training of the new PO
- Support during planning sessions
- Build-in profound knowledge of planning techniques
- Ensuring the product owner knows how to arrange the product backlog to maximize value
- Understanding and practicing agility
Development Team
- New knowledge about OPENTEXT WEM / PORTAL / DELIVERY is continuously developed in Company I, also at Company E and Company A
- Built-in trustful environment and relationship has been achieved
- Conflicts were resolved and as a part of our life can be dealt with in a positive way
- Engagement has been increased
- Collaboration has been improved
- Accountability reached a profound level
- The Development Team was enabled to become self-organized
- Communication with customers has been improved
- Satisfaction level in the Development Team has been increased
- The Team showed self-organization and high performance
- Successful transformation of the Team from traditional to the agile approach