Agility beyond the IT Department

Published on March 9th 2021

The “north star” of an agile at scale transformation is client experience. Société Générale has the ambition of providing a seamless client-to-client experience. Fidelity adopts a customer-in perspective via Customer Journey Maps, and the associated Jobs-To-Be-Done.

The O-AA Standard describes an experience design approach that is based on Design Thinking. It explains how Jobs-to-be-done analysis and experience mapping are used to design products that deliver a superior experience.

Though their agile transformation journey started in their IT departments, it morphed to an enterprise wide transformation which scope includes the business. They have shifted from a siloed organization to an integrated business/IT organization driven by value that leverages industrial digital service platforms.

The O-AA Standard describes an incremental agile transformation approach that covers the new ways of working, the organizational structure, the management system and the culture of the enterprise.

Both Société Générale and Fidelity adopted new organizational models inspired by Spotify with Tribes and Feature Teams or Squads aligned to business Value Chains. Stream-aligned teams are cross-functional, integrated, empowered and autonomous. Deep expertise is either fully embedded into stream-aligned teams though chapters which carry the standards of excellence or is regrouped into centers of excellence when expertise is scarce.