CASE STUDY: SEI
A Launch in Two Weeks
UPDATE May, 2016 : Three years after launching their first ART, SEI’s Robert F. Crudup looks back at their SAFe journey in a CIOReview.com article, Transformation: Moving a Large Organization to Agile Development, that covers the full spectrum of challenges and wins for a 1,350 person program. Their fast pivot to SAFe required teams and management to develop new skills, habits, and mindsets as they set about building a complex global securities accounting and trading system for multiple business segments.
To help drive the culture shift, early adopters were empowered to be ambassadors, and resistant senior managers were invited into the process through collaboration and respect. In three months, they moved the SEI Wealth Platform development teams to Agile, and today it is clear to employees and leadership that the decision paid off. The transition enabled them to deliver high-value business functionality on a 13-week cycle, produce higher quality code, and strengthen relationships between the development teams and business units.
“Three years into this effort our SAFe transformation has taken strong root, leading to high quality, predictable software delivery and architectural runways.” —Robert F. Crudup, SEI Investments Executive Vice President & CIO
SEI is a leading global provider of institutional and private client wealth management solutions. They serve around 8,200 clients, and manage or administer $684 billion in mutual fund and pooled or separately managed assets.
Their case study answers the question: “Why would a highly successful financial services company make a fast and aggressive move from their existing development process to the Scaled Agile Framework?”
After an intense and successful 2-week launch, Bob Crudup, SEI’s CIO says “I am pleased to lead the effort for this methodology change from waterfall/iterative development to the Scaled Agile Framework. We strictly adhere to SAFe from the Executive level through to the team deliverables. This effort has aligned our business focus and development focus by executing to the alignment of Investment Themes set by our Executive Program Portfolio Management (PPM) Process.”
Early Results Prove SAFe Works:
- 20%-25% increase in client satisfaction
- Reduced code branching from 5 – 7 on average to a single code branch
- Delivered higher value business results in a shorter delivery cycle
Many thanks and appreciation to everyone at SEI for meeting the challenge, and especially to Mona Roccia, director of SEI’s PPMO and ACE, for her leadership and for making great things happen with SAFe!
Click below to download the full case study – it’s a must-read for any organization looking to move to an enterprise agile delivery model that aligns their portfolio and programs by value streams.
