Presentation held at the Lean Wisdom seminar in Oslo in 2008.

1. Lean Wisdom seminar 13 Feb 2008
Per Spilling
Principal Consultant, Objectware
How to develop an insurance
webshop in 6 months
1How to develop an insurance webshop in 6 months

2. Front-end system
Back-end system
Delivered on time and on budget
using Scrum
2How to develop an insurance webshop in 6 months
High level
requirements
and initial GUI
prototypes
Insurance back-end system
configuration and customization
GUI design refinement
Front-end application & back-end
services development
Mar ’06 May ’06 Jun ’06 12 Dec ’06
Insurance back-
end system
service provider
selection
6 Oct ’06

3. Agile / Scrum practices all the way
through
• Co-located cross functional development team
• Complete project backlog created at the
beginning of the project
• Estimated and prioritised items
• GUI prototyping before coding
• Daily stand-up meetings
• 3-week sprints with demo
• Reflection meetings
• Empowered team
• Continuous integration
and automated testing
3How to develop an insurance webshop in 6 months

4. Customer fully commited to agile/
lean development process
• Domain experts co-located with developers
• Key stakeholders involved in the project on a daily basis
• Office space and optimised for agile development
• High performance PCs with large screens
• Agile tools for project management and knowledge sharing
• Jira, Confluence wiki, ScrumWorks
4How to develop an insurance webshop in 6 months

5. Largely greenfield project
5How to develop an insurance webshop in 6 months
Storebrand Skade
web application
Internal
Backend
System 1
Storebrand
CMS
Storebrand Web Services
Insurance
Backend
System
Insurance Web Services
Internal
Backend
System 2
External
SaaS
provider
Lightweight
architecture using
leading open source
frameworks

6. Eliminate waste in the development
process
6How to develop an insurance webshop in 6 months
Sprint
planning
Turn
prototypes
into html
Turn html
into working
application
screens
Sprint demo
3 week
sprint
Write
requirements
and GUI
prototypes
Prototype
testing
Product
backlog
Sprint
backlog
Initial PB created
when project starts
Screen design is finished before
coding starts
Requirements expert
leads specification work

7. Prototype GUI and perform user
testing before programming
7How to develop an insurance webshop in 6 months
Final design by IXD

8. One team was off-site – communication
and integration issues
8How to develop an insurance webshop in 6 months
How to ensure effective
communication and solve
integration issues?
Solution: One developer
from our team would join
the team in Denmark for
part of the week, over a
period of 7 weeks, until
integration issues where
solved

9. Other challenges
• Very short development period
• Long days, some pragmatic choices had to be made
• Project team wanted to use latest and greatest frameworks
and tools
• Sometimes in conflict with established Storebrand standards
• Try to find a balance between what is the most effective for the
project and what is best for onward system maintenance
• Some tools where only used for the duration of the project
9How to develop an insurance webshop in 6 months

10. Conclusion
• ”Scrum all the way” can achieve
very significant productivity
improvements compared to
traditional methods
• Using Agile/Scrum method
means more time spent creating
business functionality
• Agile/Scrum provides just as
good, if not better, control than
traditional methods
10How to develop an insurance webshop in 6 months