From waterfall to flow: Making Agile stick
How a Fortune 500 insurance company moved from siloed, unpredictable development to a repeatable Agile delivery model
Overview
For a Fortune 500 insurance company, traditional Waterfall development had become a barrier to predictable delivery.
Failed launches, late-stage defects and limited visibility into development efforts were increasing financial and opportunity costs.
The organization knew Agile could help, but an earlier transformation attempt had failed.
With teams distributed across four time zones and working in silos, the challenge was not simply introducing Agile processes. It was creating the trust, accountability and collaboration needed to make a new way of working stick.
Precision partnered with the client to establish a consistent Agile methodology designed to improve collaboration, surface defects earlier and create greater transparency across development initiatives.
The Challenge
An Agile transformation that had already failed
The client’s development environment faced several interconnected challenges:
- Teams were working in silos, limiting collaboration.
- Development resources were distributed across four time zones.
- Accountability across the development process was limited.
- Teams lacked consistent facilitation and Agile guidance.
- Development progress and effort were difficult to track.
- Significant defects were being discovered late in projects, delaying releases.
- Dependencies and development efforts were not consistently aligned across the enterprise.
- A previous Agile transformation had failed because of resistance to change and limited buy-in.
The client needed more than a new methodology.
It needed an approach that teams could understand, adopt and sustain.
The Objective
Build an Agile model teams could adopt and sustain
The objective was to establish a repeatable development rhythm while improving collaboration, accountability and visibility.
The transformation focused on:
- Increasing collaboration between business and technology
- Improving accountability across development
- Identifying and resolving defects earlier
- Increasing transparency into development efforts
- Establishing a consistent delivery methodology
- Improving visibility into velocity and project dependencies
- Building a high-performing Agile culture across distributed teams
The Solution
Start small. Build trust. Scale what works.
Rather than imposing a large-scale transformation immediately, Precision began with stakeholder discussions to understand the complexity of the environment.
The team recognized that the previous attempt had failed because adoption had not kept pace with process change. The new approach therefore combined shorter coaching sessions with hands-on support during actual development work.
Establishing the Agile foundation
Precision began with an existing maintenance project that also required new development. The team established user stories, aligned stakeholders on requirements, introduced sprints and Agile ceremonies, and brought the business into the development process.
Agile practices were introduced gradually, allowing the team to build trust and demonstrate success before expanding the transformation.
Making delivery visible
JIRA and Confluence were introduced to improve visibility across development efforts.
A structured testing protocol was also implemented to ensure defects could be identified during development. For the distributed team, meeting rhythms were established around the four time zones to enable more effective collaboration.
Turning adoption into a repeatable rhythm
As confidence grew, the approach expanded across additional projects.
The team was able to establish development velocity and create a repeatable delivery rhythm. Sprint-based work became an opportunity for incremental value, while collaboration and accountability became embedded in the way teams worked.
The Impact
40+ sprints completed in four months
Within two months, the team was well into its Agile journey. Four months later, 40+ sprints had been completed, with high satisfaction across the engagement.
The client also achieved:
- Enterprise-wide Agile adoption:
All development transitioned to Agile. - Stronger collaboration:
Collaboration increased across development, business, monitoring and testing teams. - Earlier dependency identification:
Dependencies were identified and addressed earlier. - A high-performing distributed team:
Teams across four time zones evolved into a cross-functional Agile team. - Earlier defect resolution:
Defects were identified and resolved alongside sprint work. - Less throwaway development:
The new approach eliminated throwaway development. - Greater visibility:
The client gained visibility and trackability across initiatives in a Scaled Agile environment.
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