Gigabit Magazine – August 2019

its enterprises for the first time.

But Agile was just the first building

block in Nationwide’s transformation;

taking this a step further, in 2011, the

insurer decided to scale its use of Agile

substantially and it employed Lean

techniques to achieve this. Harking

back to the early days of industrialisa-

tion, Nationwide adopted the idea of a

so-called ‘software development factory’,

complete with development lines that

would complete one step needed to

create code. By giving each line a clearly

defined role that it could repeat such

as – scrum master, tech lead, require-

ments lead and test lead – this helped

to enable rapid development of code

as if it were a factory. The insurer also

implemented a visual management

system, allowing developers to gain

information on the shop floor quickly,

as well as Gemba Walks – a fundamental

Lean management philosophy.

This mammoth investment was start-

ing to pay off by 2014, with Nationwide’s

software development teams noting

better quality and better productivity

using industry benchmarks. However,

Agile methodology wasn’t entirely

widespread, it only covered less than

delivering real business results.
Refining this approach may be an arduous
task but the rewards could be plentiful;
perhaps nowhere clearer than at Na-
tionwide Mutual Insurance Company.
Keeping its finger on the pulse of the
latest business strategies, Nationwide
began its software development trans-
formation almost a decade ago. It made
its first foray into Agile methodology
in 2009 and, whilst Agile wasn’t new,
it was now broadly adopted across all

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