delivering real business results . Refining this approach may be an arduous task but the rewards could be plentiful ; perhaps nowhere clearer than at Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company . Keeping its finger on the pulse of the latest business strategies , Nationwide began its software development transformation almost a decade ago . It made its first foray into Agile methodology in 2009 and , whilst Agile wasn ’ t new , it was now broadly adopted across all its enterprises for the first time .
But Agile was just the first building block in Nationwide ’ s transformation ; taking this a step further , in 2011 , the insurer decided to scale its use of Agile substantially and it employed Lean techniques to achieve this . Harking back to the early days of industrialisation , Nationwide adopted the idea of a so-called ‘ software development factory ’, complete with development lines that would complete one step needed to create code . By giving each line a clearly defined role that it could repeat such as – scrum master , tech lead , requirements lead and test lead – this helped to enable rapid development of code as if it were a factory . The insurer also implemented a visual management system , allowing developers to gain information on the shop floor quickly , as well as Gemba Walks – a fundamental Lean management philosophy .
This mammoth investment was starting to pay off by 2014 , with Nationwide ’ s software development teams noting better quality and better productivity using industry benchmarks . However , Agile methodology wasn ’ t entirely widespread , it only covered less than
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