PROGRESSIVE LEASING

118 agile methodology , a software development practice which helps teams respond to the unpredictability of constructing software . Hawksworth and his colleagues have practiced an agile approach at a team level for quite some time but the real challenge was how to scale this as teams naturally became more interdependent on each other and as products became more complex in a rapidly growing organization .

This is where Progressive Leasing first had the idea for an Agile Portfolio Office ( APO ). Hawksworth describes this as a place which “ brings a center of gravity to our software development lifecycle and adds central accountability to the process of development ”. Essentially , this helped to put a structure in place which enabled collaboration , allowed the firm to scale and to promote visibility into the product development lifecycle . Progressive Leasing then decided to take this one step further by exploring a dual track , agile product development methodology where discovering what to build is just as important as the building process . “ Our analysis showed that we spent too much time figuring out the feasibility of a product or a feature during the actual

execution of the sprint work itself ,” explains Hawksworth . “ Dual-track puts accountability on three people – the product manager , the UX designer and the tech lead – to assess the feasibility , effort and scope of an idea . It allows us to truly determine whether or not an idea is worth building before we start the work .” Successful ideas from the

MARCH 2019