Faster Time to Market Through Predictable, Repeatable, and Scalable Agile Development

The Challenge

A Fortune 500 financial institution had a new strategic goal to develop and launch a new software product to evaluate the risk of resold mortgages. The new product was envisioned to be a web-based tool that analyzes appraisal reports and provides lenders with critical information to help drive appropriate levels of appraisal review. Using a traditional waterfall estimation technique, the team initially projected an 18-month timeline and a $13 million budget for the first product release. However, senior business executives were skeptical about achieving the goal within the timeframe. An added challenge was that 95% of the team members — from business, product, and development teams — were new to Agile and Scrum, and had never participated in an Agile team or used an Agile method. Lastly, the product team was large – 12 members supporting the Product Manager and 40 technical members building the product.

The Capabilities

Product Model

A product model defines the structure, lifecycle, and value delivery approach of a product, guiding its development, management, and evolution. It outlines how a software product is designed, built, monetized, and continuously improved to meet user needs and business objectives. Unlike project-based approaches that focus on fixed timelines and deliverables, a product model emphasizes continuous value delivery, customer feedback, and iterative development using Agile and Lean principles. Key aspects include market positioning, user experience, pricing models (e.g., SaaS, licensing), roadmap planning, and cross-functional collaboration to ensure long-term product success.

Scrum of Scrums Structure

A scaled Agile coordination framework designed to enable multiple Scrum teams to collaborate effectively while working on a large, complex product or project.

Custom Agile Training

Tailored learning experience designed to meet the specific needs of teams and leaders, ensuring a more smooth Agile transformation, higher adoption rates, and a measurable business impact.

Agile Team Coaching

Support teams in overcoming challenges, improving workflows, and ensuring Agile is not just a process, but a mindset shift that drives business agility.

The Approach

Agilious implemented a product model approach to help the institution analyze and find solutions. In a product model, the focus is on consistently and iteratively providing value to the end user by addressing their needs while driving business value. A key component of the product model is prioritizing features that satisfy the biggest user pain points and business goals. Combined with an Agile estimation approach, the product model ensures reliability, accuracy, performance, scalability, and delivers the necessary outcomes.

The Solution

Training the Workforce

Agilious was engaged to lead this strategic initiative and facilitate the adoption of the Scrum framework for product development. Agilious engaged with the institution’s leadership and stakeholders to define the product vision and desired outcomes.

A significant challenge Agilious faced was that 95% of the team members — from business, product, and development teams — were new to Agile and Scrum. While many had heard about Scrum and were familiar with a few Agile concepts and Scrum practices, most team members had never participated in an Agile team or used Scrum. To bridge this gap, Agilious conducted multiple training workshops tailored to the team members’ various roles: Scrum for Teams, User Story Writing, Product Backlog Refine, User Story Estimation, Release Planning, Feature Prioritization, and Agile Forecasting.

Setting the Product Vision with an MVP Mindset

Agilious led working sessions with senior business executives and the product management team to create a product vision, identify desired business outcomes, and prioritize features using the MoSCoW (Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won’t have) method.

Establishing Multi-Team Scrum Scaling

We stood up three Scrum Teams working from a single product backlog, with joint product backlog refinements (PBR), joint Sprint Planning, and joint Sprint Review. Each team held their individual Daily Scrum and Sprint Retro. Every two Sprints, a combined Sprint Retrospective was conducted. Twice a week, a Scrum of Scrums (SoS) was held, which functioned as a meta-level stand-up meeting where representatives from each Scrum team (often Scrum Masters or senior developers) meet regularly to discuss progress, dependencies, impediments, and cross-team coordination. This structure ensures alignment across teams, facilitates knowledge sharing, risk mitigation, faster decision-making, and helps maintain agility at scale. The Scrum of Scrums fosters continuous integration, synchronized sprint planning, and shared accountability, making it ideal for large enterprises, distributed teams, or multi-team Agile environments.

Setting up the Product Backlog

The team collectively established that the initial product plan would include delivery of all the Must have, Should have, and Could have requirements, with a common consensus that the Should have and Could have requirements would be removed first if the delivery timescale was threatened.

Refining and Sizing the Backlog

Through backlog refinement sessions with the product owner, product team, and development teams, large backlog items, epics, and features, were decomposed into smaller user stories. These were then sized by the development teams using a points-based estimation scale. Each session had a clear agenda, including refining and sizing existing stories, and documenting new ones. To provide transparency, the team used a data approach, using the team’s average velocity and the product backlog data points to forecast delivery dates.

Agilious transformed the product roadmap by using Agile methodology to iterate each individual feature, while continuously monitoring user engagement and feedback. With a human-centric product approach, Agilious combined product thinking with lean-agile delivery to drive efficiency.

The Result

As a result, the team updated the MVP completion date and actual product development costs at the end of each Sprint. The team also improved with each sprint, increasing velocity and delivering high-quality product increments.

The outcome of this initiative exceeded everyone’s expectations — the MVP was completed in just 10 months at a cost of $6 million — saving the institution $7 million.