Verisk Connects Distributed Teams, Improving Program Visibility and Strategic Alignment as it Scales Agile

As a global enterprise with multiple locations and departments, Verisk was splintered into silos, with Agile teams working independently. Executives lacked a holistic program view of alignment and progress towards achieving key strategic objectives. Scaling Agile was a priority to integrate teams across projects and programs, but siloed teams and current tool limitations stalled the journey.

Increasing visibility, generating and sharing meaningful metrics, improving Agile maturity, and removing impediments became Verisk’s four key focus areas. Each of the teams can configure Planview’s Agile Program Management solution to meet their specific Agile use case, while automatically capturing all work and capacity data in one environment for enterprise-wide transparency that drives continuous improvement.

Verisk provides predictive analytics and decision-support solutions to customers in the insurance, energy and specialized markets, and financial services industries. More than 70 percent of the FORTUNE 100 relies on the company’s advanced technologies to manage risks, make better decisions and improve operating efficiency.

With teams using different Agile methodologies, such as Kanban and Scrum, plus varying degrees of adoption of the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®), it became even more necessary for Verisk management to visualize work across siloed teams and Agile tools. Plus, as teams needed to make a sudden shift to remote work, they were unable to rely on their existing physical Kanban boards.

The lack of transparency made it difficult to ensure there was alignment to C-level objectives. As a key component to successful Agile scaling, Verisk wanted to connect disparate teams on a single enterprise platform without prescribing the way teams needed to work or having to create new internal processes. Teams were managing their work manually, and they needed to communicate in a more cohesive way, particularly when it came to sharing sprint goals, objectives, and delivery progress.

Four key focus areas drove their search for a new solution: increasing visibility, establishing overall metrics, improving Agile maturity, and removing impediments. The goal was to find a software solution to deliver on all focus areas while empowering teams to work how they want and stay connected. Ultimately, Verisk wanted to be able to answer questions like:

• How do we integrate our teams and priorities better across projects and programs, and make that visible to leadership and collaborating teams?
• How do we keep our newly remote and distributed workforce aligned to strategy?
• How can we measure and deliver actionable metrics without so much manual effort?
• How do we continue to deliver value and improve?
• What’s being impeded, why, and what can we do to solve it?
• How do we better manage dependencies and see which dependencies are unnecessary?

Planview’s Agile Program Management solution supports Verisk as they manage, plan, and coordinate across Agile teams. By having all their information in one environment, they have much-needed visibility into what everyone across programs is working on at any given time and how those independent efforts are contributing towards achieving strategic objectives.

For Kevin Gold, Program Manager in the ISO Claims Solutions area at Verisk, Agile was nothing new, but their implementation of Agile kept evolving as the company continued its Agile journey. “We looked at different products to help us practice Agile at scale and improve delivering value to our customers. We found Planview LeanKit™, the heart of the Planview® Agile Program Management solution, to be more flexible and intuitive than other products, enabling us to be more successful in our key focus areas,” says Kevin.

Kevin cites several reasons why Planview’s Agile Program Management solution is used across so many distributed Agile teams at Verisk. “Planview’s Agile Program Management solution gives us visibility and metrics, but most importantly, flexibility. The virtual Kanban boards with drag-and-drop functionality don’t require us to overhaul our existing workflows. The fact that we can track work in a meaningful and efficient manner, without the complexities of some other standardized products out there, is huge,” says Kevin.

With Planview’s Agile Program Management solution, Verisk has a single solution to integrate teams and projects, and align priorities across disparate Agile teams of teams. The solution has made such an impact on the way that the ISO Claims Solutions area manages programs that they plan to leverage the virtual Kanban boards to enable remote and in-person Big Room Planning sessions.

“Planview’s Agile Program Management solution offers flexible roll-up views at the portfolio, program, project, and team levels so we can quickly leverage and communicate progress to leadership, even when we are physically dispersed. We can now raise awareness of the positive outcomes from our Agile teams, visualize dependencies, and eliminate impediments, so leadership has relevant information to make decisions. By having a common Agile Program Management solution among our Agile teams, we have an opportunity for synergies and sharing data and best practices, so we can continue to propel our Agile journey forward,” says Kevin.

To learn more about what Planview® solutions can do for your organization, visit Planview.com