- May 16, 2022
- Tech
- Data
- Cloud
- Luxembourg
- Security
- Startup
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- Digital
LuxSE IT Series #7: Developing controlled agility to unleash innovation
While Agile grew out of software development, enterprise
agility extends well beyond that. It is about changing the way companies work.
All the efforts deployed by the Luxembourg Stock Exchange through its ambitious
transformation programme are directed towards becoming an agile organisation on
multiple levels. In this last instalment of LuxSE’s article series dedicated to
the company’s transformative journey, Laurent Pulinckx, CIO & Member of the
Executive Committee of LuxSE, outlines what has been achieved so far and what’s
next on the agenda.
Technological and organisational changes
"In terms of technological infrastructure, it is clear
that our move to the public cloud has enabled us to be much more responsive to
variations in business needs and expectations," says Laurent Pulinckx
(photo). "With previous on-premise systems, investments had to be
carefully planned a long time in advance, whereas the cloud allows us to
provision additional capacity almost instantly and without affecting
operations. And the same is true when it comes to downsizing resources, which
is not possible with in-house systems."
The changes made by LuxSE to its application framework also
lead to increased agility. NoSQL databases allow data models to be modified
more quickly while limiting the impact on existing applications, microservices
lead to smaller work units, Headless CMS facilitates the distribution of
information through different media, and Apache Kafka makes it possible to
generate message flows that any microservice can subscribe to without a defined
producer-consumer relationship.
"But we went further," says Laurent Pulinckx.
"We revisited our internal governance and reconsidered the way we manage
our project portfolio. An agile organisation needs faster decision-making
processes and, for that, must put in place a much more transparent flow of
information on the advancement of projects and products." This was
implemented through a new project portfolio management concept where projects
are presented to the management committee on a quarterly basis. Projects are supervised
by steering committees, which meet monthly and are therefore able to quickly
decide to undertake new developments or to abandon certain projects underway,
depending on their success and relevance.
To prevent agility from turning into agitation, it is also
important to automate certain processes, especially the continuous deployment
process. "Automating the CI/CD chain forces us to observe a discipline in
the way we develop our information systems," the CIO explains. "This
requires rigor as well as a substantial documentation effort, but automation
makes it possible to reinforce quality through tests and code analyses. This
also allows formal validation points to be established at each stage of the
chain."
Agility, a matter of competitiveness
"The stock exchange industry is a niche business,"
Laurent Pulinckx notes. "Moreover", he adds, "the Luxembourg
Stock Exchange is a small player compared to European majors." The only
feasible option for LuxSE to defend its market position is to be agile,
innovative and to have the capacity to deliver innovations as quickly as
possible.
There are two other advantages to being able to deploy
smaller increments of value through technology. The first one is the capability
to communicate rapidly with both the business lines and the end users.
"Our centralised database for structured sustainability data, the LGX DataHub, is very
successful," the CIO of LuxSE explains. "Part of this success comes
from the fact that we were able to show potential users a set of features long
before going into production. For this, we worked in close collaboration with
customers to whom we submitted successive prototypes which gradually accumulated
value."
"The second benefit is 'the right to make mistakes'. If
we are moving in the wrong direction with the development of certain product
features, we can change course faster than with monolithic developments. This
drastically reduces the incidence and impact of such errors and builds
confidence within the teams. Of course, all this can't happen without a
significant cultural shift," underlines Laurent Pulinckx.
Understanding and managing change
"Our ambition is to re-deploy our entire application
stack in the cloud for end 2022,” he continues. "Such a transformation
requires the implementation of a change management programme. In 2019 and 2020,
our efforts focused primarily on the technological teams. As from this year,
our business lines were much more involved and they gradually use more
applications based on the new standards."
Implementing such an agenda requires significant
organisational involvement.
"To embrace change, people need to understand the
choices made," he underlines. "We chose to move towards more
inclusive decision-making processes to allow team members to express their
vision on new technology implementation and better understand why and how
decisions are made. To build engagement across the company, it is essential
that decisions are well understood."
LuxSE's change management efforts are set to intensify in
the coming months, as LuxSE continues on its journey to the cloud. "Our
purpose is to make everyone understand where our company is heading, because
this is not so much a technological matter as a shift in the way we operate and
a profound change in the corporate culture on all levels," he concludes.
By Michael Renotte
LuxSE IT Series #1: The Luxembourg Stock Exchange heads to the clouds
LuxSE IT Series #2: LuxSE embraces NoSQL to boost efficiency
LuxSE IT Series #3: LuxSE accelerates software delivery with CI/CD
LuxSE IT Series #4: LuxSE turns to Headless CMS to improve digital experiences
LuxSE IT Series #5: LuxSE adopts Apache Kafka to translate data into valuable services
LuxSE IT Series #6: LuxSE boosts business agility with microservices