Enhancing agile software development in the banking sector—A comprehensive case study at LHV

Abstract

FinTech companies are challenging established financial institutions' dominance by offering the same products with a superior customer experience and delivering new features faster. The adoption of agile software development partially enables this competitive advantage. In response to this challenge, banks explore how they can improve their agile processes. LHV, a mid-sized bank, uses agile practices but faces the challenge of further improvement to stay competitive with FinTech companies.In this article, we explore how LHV can improve its agile software development process. We conduct a case study at LHV where we first derive eight change proposals based on a literature review and interviews. Then, we report on how LHV implemented the change proposals and their perceived impact. Our results stress the importance of taking a coherent approach to improving agile processes by considering both business units and operations involved in the product life-cycle. It is also necessary to align organizational structures to enable team autonomy by, for instance, decentralizing decision authority. Finally, it is beneficial to adapt agile practices to their context and have an IT architecture and technology supporting the agile approach.

Software Process Evaluation from User Perceptions and Log Data

“…7,10,29,[33][34][35] By considering opinions of multiple stakeholders, our approach fits well with agile SDM that emphasize team autonomy, decentralized decision making, flexible scope, and managing a high degree of requirement changes. 36,37 Detailed insight into SDM and its elements can be gained by comparing the perceptions of different stakeholders regarding the same SDM and/or its element. 9 Another important theoretical development in the field was that SDM should be studied at the level of its constituent elements like activities, tools, roles, and produced documents and not only as a whole.…”

“…To obtain information about the studied SDM and its elements, the aforementioned studies focused on SDM perceptions held by different stakeholders, namely, developers, managers, and customers to measure characteristics like level of use, assimilation, social and technical suitability, developer satisfaction, and impact on performance 7,10,29,33–35 . By considering opinions of multiple stakeholders, our approach fits well with agile SDM that emphasize team autonomy, decentralized decision making, flexible scope, and managing a high degree of requirement changes 36,37 …”

Agile Methods in the German Banking Sector – some evidence on expectations, experiences and success factors

“…Other contributions present case studies on the digital transformation of a particular bank (e.g. Birkinshaw 2019; Christou et al 2010;Roses et al 2016;Scott et al 2021). As the existing research does not pursue a sector-specific perspective, our study of the German banking sector complements the existing empirical research on agile methods in software development processes.…”