Last Friday, we hosted a Virtual Think IT Panel Event on MythBusters: Agile, Product, and DevOps. A huge thank you to our panelists; Peter Bucka, Vice President, Sr. Software Engineer Director, Risk Mgmt. & Compliance Tech at U.S. Bank, Chris Milton, Vice President, Principal Agile & Product Coach at U.S. Bank, and John Sibo, VP, Strategic Enterprise Agile Tech Coach, Lead Software Engineer at U.S. Bank for sharing their experience with agile, product, and DevOps. Thank you to everyone who joined us as well!
Mobbing: a technique that involves the entire team. Teams work on one single monitor together, driving different initiatives. They take turns “driving” on the computer, which means they each get a chance to be in the seat actually doing. This is used to have an inclusive learning environment.
What changes have your infrastructure teams gone through to support the agile & product-model?
Teams are learning how to automate with what they have and what the value their teams already provide. It is important to build out a value stream of what a customer truly goes through.
Flash Build Events: a virtual learning environment to learn new skills on new teams
How has an Agile culture and a DevOps methodology helped you to manage the continued change ramp up? How are you prioritizing new vs. day to day/operations?
During ramp-up, US bank has done empath building exercises to understand what teams are doing. It helps to share real-life experiences with each other.
Can the panel address the Agile core value of Transparency and how that is practiced in a highly regulated, need-to-know culture and environment?
Transparency is practiced in highly regulated environments by making their work transparent internally. U.S. Bank is leveraging quarterly planning activities to see what they are trying to accomplish throughout the company. Even though they are a highly regulated bank, they can be transparent within their company’s environment.
Can you speak to centralized vs. distributed application support (thinking help desk functions, alert response) in product-based models?
It is important to ensure your team is supporting centralized support because they help each team. They can filter calls and understand what is coming from any problems they are receiving. Centralized support can also answer any calls that the direct engineering team would never get to due to the overwhelming amount received.
How do you organize large initiatives across the teams?
- What are the strategic objectives for the year?
- Break down by quarters
- How do we be successful?
- Have team level planning
- Transform project management office
To learn more about what U.S. Bank is doing internally with agile and DevOps, you can review the slide deck here