Case StudiesMorneau Shepell Case Study

In an always-on world, speed matters.

It is critical because customers’ needs and interests are constantly changing. At the same time, there is fierce competition among companies looking to capitalize on weaknesses and opportunities.

For LifeWorks (formerly Morneau Shepell), the need to move faster and differently emerged as part of an extensive digital transformation launched two years ago.

The company was looking to improve the delivery of a Unified Platform including its employee assistance, absence management, and pension and benefits software, and present the solution as one cohesive experience.

While velocity and quality were key priorities, the company also wanted a better and sharper focus on customers.

As important, LifeWorks was striving to outflank innovative and fast-moving competitors that were delivering new features in small chunks to the market faster.

After extensive research, the company decided to use agile to enable the development of high-quality software aligned with customers’ expectations.

To help drive the embrace of agile, LifeWorks engage softsolutions to deliver comprehensive and embedded agile training and coaching towards a full transformation.

Ivar D’Silva, Vice-President, Agile Delivery Leader at LifeWorks, said the move to agile started with its disability product, whose team members already had a foundational understanding of agile.

In partnership with softsolutions, LifeWorks defined and developed an in-depth agile playbook. softsolutions also provided thought leadership, coaching, and guidance to ensure that LifeWorks used and successfully deployed the right flavour of agile for its environment.

They showed us how to take initiatives, decompose them, break them down, engage the right domains and areas, and start planning them out in an agile manner,

D’Silva said.

For LifeWorks, agile is proving to be a more robust approach to digital product development than traditional delivery models that involve a lot of time spent upfront to define requirements and specifications and then long development and user testing phases.

Among LifeWorks’ key learnings is that moving to agile is that the transformation features multiple dimensions and includes people, culture, processes, systems, and technology.

As important, agile involves a mindset shift  focused on giving teams the empowerment and autonomy to determine and build features for the customer.

While LifeWorks’ embrace of agile continues to evolve, there is significant month-over-month improvement in velocity and quality.

D’Silva said agile is proving to be an efficient way to learn, improve, and drive software development.

You’re trying to deliver as fast as possible in small increments, test the waters, and recalibrate. You’re constantly moving in priority of value and confirming acceptance on the market.

160%

Efficiency (Velocity) increase

120%

Quality increase

+300

People trained

27

High performance teams formed and coached

softsolutions logo

Ready to deliver more and stress less?

Talk to us on 1300 585 516 or email info@softsolutions.consulting.

For more information on bespoke software development, head to

softsolutions.consulting/software-development