Over the course of two and one-half years, Fannie Mae worked aggressively to transform itself from a heavily silo’d and firmly entrenched command and control culture. The organization went from following a gated workflow with long release cycles to an Agile organization.
Today, Fannie Mae is a more dynamic value oriented organization that is:
- responsive to stakeholders
- focused on achieving greater efficiency by enabling fast-feedback loops
- using empirical data to optimize mature and persistent agile values and practices.
Within the larger context of the transformation to enterprise agility, this Experience Report focuses on:
- why Fannie Mae chose to change,
- the organization’s journey and the corresponding challenges
- benefits Fannie Mae realized
- key lessons the team learned
The team’s main conclusion: while it is important to build bridges with business stakeholders, have mature agile teams, and leverage automation and embrace the values and principles of the agile manifesto; a successful and longstanding transformation is dependent upon the unrelenting focus on changing the ecosystem supporting the organization’s change at the outset.
