The Criminal Sanctions Agency decided to develop agile practices in its software development project and introduce the SAFe model (Scaled Agile Framework) to streamline and speed up its operations.
The Criminal Sanctions Agency worked on a demanding and extensive ROTI development project, where the benefits of agile methods would significantly speed up the completion of the project. The project's goal is defined as improving the operations of the Criminal Sanctions Agency by, among other things, harmonising the work processes in community sanctions and imprisonment and by eliminating double work.
A joint client data system was chosen as a key change tool, replacing the VATI prisoner data system and the TYYNE data system for community sanctions. Product development aims to develop a new client data system that combines two separate systems to be decommissioned. The end result is a modernised and joint data system, required by legislation, speeding up work and improving management.
The project implementation schedules dragged on, so the project management team wanted to speed up product development. The acceleration was implemented by adopting an agile operating model, which improved the visibility of the product, accelerated the feedback cycle and thus quality, and focused on the implementation of the core features of the project by re-prioritising the content.
The Criminal Sanctions agency speed up their development with SAFe
In brief
Challenge The purpose of the collaboration was to increase transparency to work progress and make unfinished work visible, improve operations, and facilitate work by adopting agile practices.
Results The new, agile operating model and the renewed team structures accelerated the implementation of functionalities (lead time from definition to testing) from an average of 14 weeks to three weeks.
Benefits Transparency of unfinished work processes brought an understanding of the state of the project, allowing corrective action to be properly targeted and things to proceed more easily and effortlessly. With the new team structures, the work was completed more easily and quickly. Overall, the teams performed better, and the employees’ well-being at work increased.
The Criminal Sanctions Agency, operating under the direction of the Ministry of Justice, wanted to intensify and improve agile practices in its software development project. As a result, the change process simplified work processes, accelerated development projects, and empowered people. Also, conflicts concerning unclear roles and responsibilities were resolved, and the employees' well-being at work increased.
Agile practices for smoother work progress
The project’s old operating model had sought to introduce some elements of agile development, but the operation was more reminiscent of the traditional waterfall model, a step-by-step design process in which one thing is completed at a time. Simplified, the waterfall model can be summarised as follows: first designed, then implemented, then tested, and finally delivered.
The challenge was that in the old operating model, the organisation was siloed. Communication and cooperation between different operating units took a lot of time and energy. The work progressed slowly and was prone to misunderstandings due to communication challenges. This led to the same thing being done several times. In addition, the teams were formed according to the employees’ competence, in which case the work was transferred from one team to another several times before completion. The feedback cycle slowed down which, in turn, meant that some of the work had to be done again, prolonging the schedules of the overall project.
Nitor joined the project in 2019 to help make the project more agile. The ROTI project switched to the SAFe development model in March–May 2019.
In agile methods, software is developed in small parts and in short periods of time. Program increment is the period during which the Agile Release Train (ART) gradually produces value, i.e. functional and tested software and systems. Increments are typically 8 to 12 weeks long. At the beginning of the cooperation, Nitor also took over the management and improvement of SAFe increments. During these, the identified operational challenges were solved, and the entire project was developed more agilely.
The Agile Release Train consisted of several agile teams who, along with other stakeholders, developed and published sections piece by piece. During each increment, the results of the development work were presented to everyone, including some of the end-users, giving us valuable feedback on the development of the project content.
Initially, we focused on gaining transparency into content (what was done, what was worked on, and what was not yet done), quality for the requirements themselves, and priorities for the work not done. This laid the foundation for the fact that when the operating models were streamlined, shortening lead times, we were able to implement content faster and with higher quality according to the order of precedence.
Transparency yields higher quality
Making the work transparent and better defined also allowed for higher quality. The teams had a better understanding of what had not been done before. Some features had been left out or had never been adequately tested at the system level. One of the goals of the development project was to understand the scattered features better and combine them, making it easier to identify work that still needed to be done.
Next, we created workflow transparency, highlighting bottlenecks and challenges. Based on them, the work content was built to be better and easier to manage, and the course of the work was improved with each increment. In this context, the teams were reconfigured so that each team had the necessary skills to do one whole feature from start to finish.
Structural changes in content, as well as team changes, helped reduce interdependencies between teams. Thanks to the changes, one task was now completed from start to finish in one team. The work was completed faster and easier, as communication was limited to taking place within the team. A good example of a change in team structures was the transfer of system testing to implementation teams.
The change from competence-based teams to teams that managed on the whole feature, in turn, resulted in feedback on performance in 2–4 weeks. In the old model, this took 12 to 16 weeks. In addition, roles and responsibilities were clarified, which reduced conflicts. These measures further improved the performance of the business.
The transition went well overall. Largely thanks to the tools provided by the SAFe model, it has been possible to respond to challenges earlier than before. The degree of readiness of the data system to be developed in the project evolved from 54% to 81%. In addition, technical tasks were completed, the largest of which was the CRM version upgrade of the ROTI platform. Other completed tasks included the acquisition of a new document management component and the description and resource plan for the ROTI maintenance service.
With the help of the SAFe development model, the development work of the ROTI client data system was completed, which enabled the transition to the implementation project. Towards the end of the cooperation, issues related to resourcing and project completion were discussed together, after which the change-empowered organisation completed the development project.
Trust and consistent change are the keys to success
The challenges of software development were solved by working according to the SAFe model, where one thing at a time was solved step by step. Continuous collection of user feedback ensured that the ongoing work was built on a solid foundation. In addition, the SAFe model highlighted the challenges of the old software development model, which improved efficiency and accelerated product development and thus improved the quality of the end product.
As a result, the change process simplified work processes, accelerated development projects, empowered people, and contradictions were resolved. With the development project, prioritisation and transparency of unfinished work processes improved, bottlenecks disappeared, and lead times shortened. The new, agile operating model made it possible to pull together and complete the planned work more easily. One change at a time, the organisation was empowered, and the work progressed smoothly.
The development project focused on the content of the work, increasing transparency, facilitating prioritisation, breaking dependencies, and changing team structures. Roles and responsibilities were clarified, and once the content itself was completed, the project moved on to the deployment project.
The cooperation achieved the desired results. The trust built between the customer and Nitor made it possible for the organisation to be willing to move to a new and different way of operating. It was quickly realised that this was worthwhile, as the progress was smooth and steadily heading in the right direction.
Improved well-being in a transparent organisation
During the cooperation, the customer developed a more efficient organisational structure for the software development project, new operating methods and better workflow transparency. The benefits of the new operating model were quickly noticed in the organisation, although the change relative to the old one was significant.
With the new team structures, the completion of the work became more effortless, and many bottlenecks disappeared due to the removal of dependencies between the teams. These led from agility to an empowered organisation where problems can be solved quickly and it is possible to take responsibility for the whole thing that is being worked on. Overall, the teams performed better, and the employees’ well-being at work increased.
