Agile Methodology Transforms Alaska USA Federal Credit Union IT Organization

Watch this two-minute video to learn how Agile Transformation impacted Alaska USA Federal Credit Union's IT organization.

Challenge

The IT organization of Alaska Federal Credit Union had been working to adopt agile practices. But after a year, IT was struggling to realize any tangible benefits. In order to meet executive business goals and fulfill commitments to members, the IT organization needed help accelerating their agile transformation efforts and fundamentally changing how they approached software development and delivery.

Alaska USA Federal Credit Union knew it needed expert guidance in digital transformation and agile processes. Luckily, as an existing financial services client of WWT, Alaska USA Federal Credit Union knew exactly who they could trust to breathe life into their transformation efforts.

– Mike Brady, CIO, Alaska USA Federal Credit Union

Discovery

WWT's Application Services team began the engagement by mapping out Alaska USA Federal Credit Union's customized path to agile success. In this discovery assessment, our experts took the time to clearly learn about and define:

Where Alaska USA Federal Credit Union was starting from in terms of motivations for adopting agile processes.
What their current reality looked like in terms of agile practices across the different groups of the IT organization.
Where they wanted to finish in terms of tangible business outcomes and benefits.

WWT's assessment revealed multiple challenges that were slowing down the IT organization. Challenges that were effectively stagnating forward movement of the team's transformation efforts and preventing them from meeting critical business demands. These challenges included over commitments, multiple sources of work input, continual context switching, and an inefficient use of valuable resources.

Solution

To directly address Alaska USA Federal Credit Union's challenges, WWT employed an agile and system-based approach to help the IT organization operationalize agile and DevOps at scale. Practically, we provided agile consulting, technology mentorship, DevOps consulting and team coaching to facilitate Alaska USA Federal Credit Union's agile transformation.

Our Application Services experts executed solutions in short sprints of focused transformation that enabled IT teams to deliver on commitments while simultaneously changing the way they worked. We work with organizations to deliver fully implemented changes through short cycles of work because it allows organizations to quickly realize value and see results. This agile approach is far more efficient than starting several projects that may or may not ever be completed. It is also more satisfying for the teams involved.

Alaska USA Federal Credit Union's IT organization and teams were able to prioritize tasks based on what would generate the most overall transformation momentum and expedite the realization of leadership's key business goals and outcomes.

Results

Throughout the engagement, WWT helped Alaska USA Federal Credit Union discover and unlock the hidden capacity within individuals, teams and the broader IT organization.

By addressing and removing common challenges to agile adoption — things like wait time, dependencies, ill-defined projects — IT organizations can increase their output without having to increase their staff. Agile transformation can help individuals learn how to work smarter.

– Scott Chertkow, Senior VP IM Applications, Alaska USA Federal Credit Union

All of this successful agile transformation was accomplished over a year, in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic with all teams working remotely.

In terms of tangible outcomes and benefits to Alaska USA Federal Credit Union, the results speak for themselves:

50 percent increase in productivity and velocity
22.3 percent increase in overall customer satisfaction rating
30.3 percent increase in speed of delivery rating
18.8 percent increase in value delivered rating
18.8 percent increase in quality rating