Frontrunner Award: Saxo Bank

The International Panel of Judges has decided to honor Saxo Bank with the Frontrunner Award in 2013. As the leading online trading and investment platform, Saxo Bank pushes the frontier boundaries of superior client service and competitive pricing. Challenging the traditional of working with software development and testing. The idea to adopt best and industry leading practice came from the executive top in order to better interlink project management, software development and testing with value creation (based on the strategy).

What makes this so unique?  Since between 40% and 60% of software failures and defects are the result of poor software management and requirements definition. In plain English, this means that about half of the problems encountered could have been avoided by making it clear, from the very beginning, what the was expected from the respective project. This is to say that the programming was fine and the developers did their job well – only they did a different job from what they were supposed to.

The solution was to combine the interaction points of the various team members, their roles, tasks and artifact throughout the lifecycles. This should standardize at least a common way of working, improve handover, joint work as well as the possibility to identify quality and value gateways. Thereby changing the traditional project work streams from siloed way of thinking and working to a more joint agile way of thinking, working and modelling, enabling a whole new level of innovation and leading the way forward. As a starting point, LEADing Practice assets and artefacts where used in the Strategy work, redesign of the Business Model of IT, the IT way of working and the Software Development and Testing Lifecycle interaction points. Below, please find the Testing Service Delivery Model example of their “Frontrunner” way of developing their own leading practice in order to identify, plan and create value.

The fast facts which Saxobank themselves mention about their new Testing Service Delivery Model:

• The model is simple – all the information is available on a single poster for all involved to see their role.
• The model lists the roles typically needed for the practitioner to succeed during the different phases.
• Project Managers can use the model to understand which role should do what and what is expected to be delivered during the different phases of a project.
• The model includes all primary artifacts needed by the specific role.
• The model illustrates the interaction points and where coordination needs to create value.
• There is a common defined standard for both roles, phases, interaction points, templates and measurements.
• Defines a standard measurement for Quality Gates & Value Audits.