Home Credit Indonesia's agile journey started in 2017, when they created their first Scrum team with the aim of increasing transparency and making their results more measurable. This case study summarises the Scrum implementation.
Home Credit Indonesia offers financing services for consumers who buy consumer durables such as household appliances, electronics, mobile phones or furniture.
In 2018, agile methods were introduced in another area: the company wanted to make its mobile app development process more efficient. The 16 mobile app developers had previously worked in a team, so as a first step, two Scrum teams were created. However, this did not solve the problem and there was no visible improvement. The company soon realised that the main obstacle was the mindset of their colleagues: developers were regularly blaming others and expecting others to solve things they could have done themselves. The question was how they could get the Scrum values (Commitment, Focus, Openness, Respect and Courage) to be embedded in the everyday lives of developers.
Developers were constantly encouraged to try to solve the obstacles they encounter every day, rather than escalate them and wait for them to be solved. Team members were also encouraged to be open, not to be afraid of technical changes or mistakes, but how to learn from them and how to become more self-managing. As a result of this continuous encouragement and leading by example, by the end of 2018 the IT organisation had 18 Scrum teams.
At the beginning of 2019, the company's management realised the success of the Scrum teams, they responded faster to market needs, but as the rest of the company was not working in Scrum, this slowed down the work of the Scrum teams. Recognizing this, they created a new Scrum team with the goal of achieving business agility, with backlog, sprint, sprint goals...
They set sprint goals such as:
By the end of 2019, 6 value streams were created. There was a value stream to which 37 people belonged and still belong, but there was also a value stream to which 100 people belonged and still belong.
Thanks to the agile methods introduced, the company's priorities are clear, employees are engaged, strategic directions are known by all, and teams are working to achieve predefined business results, not to deliver a project.
What is the lesson for you from this Scrum case study? Would you have started your agile journey differently?
If you want to read in more detail about how Home Credit Indonesia became a learning organisation, you can do so at the English link also used as a resource.
This article was written by Zsuzsa Danka
