How Agile Methodologies, Tools & the Pandemic Transformed Today's Financial Services Sector

[#1]

Since March 2020, Financial Services IT organizations have been meeting new challenges caused by the pandemic and have also been forced to recognize the existing challenges, suddenly accelerated by the pandemic.

Many organizations in the financial services industry – or any other business for that matter – now find themselves at a place where change is not something that is planned out and executed on in the future; change is now the new normal.

Now for another pretty recognizable phrase... we are all in this together... but even so, someone has to lead the charge.

The increasing complexity of business models in the financial services industry is top of mind for all who work in the industry. Not forgetting that globalization is having a significant impact too. Regulations are changing, and so are the bodies who regulate the industry. Customers and consumers have more choices that ever before, with may able to switch allegiance overnight.

All of the above may seem like cause for concern, however, Those who are champions of change can—and do—adapt to any changes in the market, the industry, or the economy by utilizing Agile methodologies and, in many cases, Atlassian tools, such as Jira, Confluence, Jira Service Management, etc.

One of the best ways to accelerate change is to learn from those who have gone before, discussing their lessons learned from the past year of industry and global disruption. Covering the successes and failures, to innovate and more rapidly deliver new products and services much faster than before – while keeping costs manageable and the business resilient.

"The technology part is actually less complicated than reinventing business models. That aspect of change is about culture, leadership, and transforming into something else."

- Senior Executive, Head of IT, European Financial Institution

They also understood that maintaining a successful Financial Services IT organization was about having a cloud-ready blueprint, relentlessly focus on operational excellence and agile project delivery, and having visibility of data to construct insight into their performance and the behaviors of customers.

"Cloud gives the industry many kinds of new technologies that make digital disruption possible."

- Krishna Kumar, Head of Cloud Engineering and Support, An Investment Management Company

It also required a focus on value, with IT and operations being agile to pivot or persevere to accelerate and more successfully deliver quantifiable business benefits to the business while continuously improving operational resilience.

"The key takeaway is that in order to find success, one must employ strategic initiatives like KPI mapping, as an example. Returning to the basics of using Jira in the right way is important, especially in FinTech, an area in which people tend to get very excited about the possibilities of bots."

- Laura Robertson, Vice President Intelligent Automation & Process Engineering, Paysafe Group

💭  So the question to you... How do you address the pace of change?

---

As part of the project above, an eBook was created to encompass more of the industry leaders experiences and practical advice with agile methods and tools. Creating a potential benchmark executives in the industry can use to measure their own efforts. This resource is available here.