The Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBanks) are an essential source of stable, low-cost funds to financial institutions for home mortgage, small business, rural and agricultural loans. The FHLB Office of Finance is operated on behalf of the 12 regional FHLBanks. Its primary function is to issue and service all debt securities for the FHLBanks, while obtaining the most cost-effective terms possible, given the needs of investors and dealers.

Business Challenge

Having built systems using the traditional waterfall approach in the past, FHLBanks Office of Finance knew well the short-comings of this standard and time-tested method. So when they needed to build an Investor Tracking System (ITS) to address a critical business issue, it was imperative that the requirements were allowed to evolve, and that built functionality would not go to waste. After reading about agile development and the flexible benefits of this method, it was the hope of the Director of Information Technology to make this FHLBs first internal, agile-developed project. To meet this need, the FHLB Office of Finance hired Command Information to perform an Envision and introduce agile methods to an unusually skeptical IT team.

How Command Information Helped

After completing a nine-day Envision with the ITS business and technical teams, the customer had a clearer understanding of the solution priorities and overall direction. We then able to build an initial release plan that would deliver the highest value functionality first. Working under the microscope of a team with strong reservations about the effectiveness of an agile approach, Command Information coached the development, QA, customer, and IT groups to work together and embrace the principles of agile software development. Additionally, we coached and mentored the development/QA skills necessary to support agile development, while delivering functionality on schedule with the ITS release plan. User-acceptance-testing was performed after each iteration, and because they were using an agile process, the business team was able to update the plan with new/different requirements that offered more value than those originally in the plan. After just six iterations, the team released their first application – three months earlier than their original plan which was based upon a traditional waterfall approach.

Value Delivered

By the 10th week of development any objections to the agile approach had been allayed. The team was developing entirely using agile methods, and each iteration brought new experiences and an eagerness to begin the next phase of development. The business users were ecstatic about the team’s progress and became internal champions of the new agile process. They were particularly impressed with the ability to incorporate new functionality without incurring additional IT costs or having to request more development hours. The project was best summed up by ITS business owner, Dave Messerly, "I don’t need any more hours…I’m getting exactly what I want. We’re agile over here."

Today, the FHLB Office of Finance is extending the agile approach to other projects within the business unit and introducing the approach across the entire FHLBanks organization.