In today's highly competitive insurance industry, Farm Bureau's success is highly dependent on technology. Our agents need new tools as quickly as possible in order to compete. A short delivery lifecycle of these tools from the Home Office to our agents is critical. Find out how Information Services is responding to this challenge by playing it SAFe®.

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While the “Good to Great Marketing Tools” feature typically focuses on tools agents can use themselves to grow their business, this month we look at a new Home Office software development methodology called SAFe that is helping bring these tools to agents more quickly. SAFe stands for Scaled Agile Framework, a knowledge-base of organization and workflow patterns that guide businesses in implementing (by scaling up or down) lean and agile practices. In addition to enabling a faster time to market for software tools, the SAFe methodology can also raise productivity, improve quality, and lower risks. In a broader sense, SAFe also provides a philosophical framework for operating our entire enterprise by emphasizing continuous improvement through reflection and then tuning behavior accordingly.

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SAFe has only been in place at the Home Office for a few weeks, but it’s already paid off. “We have delivered eight features we said we were going to deliver during our first two weeks of using the SAFe approach,” says Dana May, the Director of Farm Bureau Insurance’s Project Management Office.

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“In the past, our software development followed what’s typically 
called a ‘waterfall’ methodology where progress flowed in one direction – 
downwards like a waterfall – through the phases of conception, construction, testing, deployment, and maintenance,” Dana says. “A requirement document would be produced to show how the software was supposed to look, then development would begin without going back on the requirements. Finally, testing would begin in the real world where conditions and requirements had probably changed.” Also, in the past, Dana says, “we had all these different teams and individuals doing things their own way. Each team had their own processes. Because of the number of teams, projects, and processes, we needed a tool to help coordinate our efforts, something that could help our teams align with each other and develop consistency between them. To help coordinate the teams and develop this consistency, SAFe was adopted.”

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The “Agile” component of the SAFe methodology emphasizes the use of smaller, multi-disciplinary teams to quickly solve problems. “When one of our new SAFe teams is confronted with a large, complex problem,” Dana says, “it breaks it into smaller pieces, develops solutions to each component using feedback loops, and then integrates the solutions into a whole.” SAFe teams also place more value on adapting to change than on sticking to a plan, and they hold themselves accountable. Because of this, they are largely self-governing. “We tell the SAFe teams what needs to get done,” Dana says, “but not how to do it.”

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The teams also work closely with their customers – Farm Bureau agents and other employees. “Each team has a product owner,” Dana says, “whose job is to find out what the customer wants.” This product owner works closely with an agent or employee and relays feedback to the team. The SAFe methodology summarizes this approach with the Japanese word gemba which loosely translates into “go to where the work is.” Gemba helps puts the responsibility for innovation into the hands of those who are closest to customers while speeding up work and increasing motivation.

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“With SAFe we now have alignment,” Dana says. This alignment is embodied in a giant wall chart hanging outside the Project Management Office. “The chart cross-references projects and teams and gives visibility into everything that’s going on,” says Cor Hofmann, Release Train Engineer at the Project Management Office. “We can see the interdependencies between projects and people and this information is visible to everyone.” Before SAFe, this information was less visible. “It was easy to forget things,” Cor says. “There were delays because we didn’t prepare for the interdependencies. Now, with SAFe and this chart, everyone including management can see at a glance the impacts of any requested changes. So we now have alignment with management too.”

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The new SAFe methodology has also changed the physical layout of the Information Services department. “Now all the teams are physically co-located together,” Dana says. “All team members sit by each other. Instead of seating by job functions, seating is determined by teams. This arrangement helps foster the idea that the members of a team win or lose as a team. There are no silos for blame.”

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Every ten weeks the teams meet for two days of planning at the Home Office. Customers (agents and employees) can approach the teams at this meeting, ask them about projects right there, and give and get fast feedback.

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“We’re getting better at alignment with the agents,” says Emily Roseborough, a manager at the Project Management Office. “With SAFe, agents desires can be translated into goals. That means the things agents have always wanted will happen faster. Also, before SAFe, there was no way of telling agents when we might deliver on a project. Now there’s much more predictability with agents’ requests.”

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One example of a highly anticipated feature that the SAFe teams are working on for agents is the “Quicker Quick Quote”. This feature will reduce the number of fields required to generate a quote. “When things like the Quicker Quote are executed or released,” Emily says, “SAFe coordinates things that happen all at once. It also gives the Training department more time to do their job. Overall, the benefit of SAFe is the faster delivery of quality service to  the field.”

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“We’ve already delivered what we said we would deliver during the first two weeks of using SAFe,” Dana says. “So far SAFe has been well received. We are very impressed.”

 

SAFe is helping Farm Bureau become a fast-moving and adaptive organization. This agility is the key to our success in today’s tumultuous insurance markets. With the success of SAFe in the Information Services department, the time may be right to apply the methodology to any situation in the company where problems are complex and outcomes unclear. Soon, we all could be playing it SAFe.

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MARKETING TOOLS

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