Lucida Group
Mike Joseph, Chief Executive Officer for Lucida Group (formally known as Right Choice Insurance Brokers Ltd), talks to us about how Open GI (OGI) collaborated with them to enhance their delivery approach.
OGI has been Lucida’s preferred technology partner for 14 years, and during this time a strong and supportive partnership has been forged. So, when OGI was looking to review its existing delivery approach, they engaged with us to help road test their plans. Together, we worked through a diagnostic programme to see how a new model could be applied to our latest tech investment – OGI’s IHP Proxy.
“I feel that this new process has greatly improved our development experience.”
We were keen to expand our product distribution and wanted to implement IHP Proxy swiftly into the business. During mid-2020, OGI and Lucida kick-started a diagnostic programme which focused on reviewing and changing the development delivery for IHP Proxy using a Systems Thinking methodology. The diagnostic programme produced four significant outcomes:
1.
At the start, a joint workshop took place between both companies to gather an outline of requirements and shared goals. Together, we agreed a set of targets that would work towards accelerating the delivery of IHP Proxy. This step established a new and energised two-way rapport between us all as we started to work closer together.
2.
From that workshop, OGI shifted its bi-weekly sprint cycle to a weekly schedule. This key change meant that all planned works would keep moving efficiently, and we could be kept up to date about progress and when we would receive the solution.
3.
It was also agreed to implement an additional weekly review session to keep the delivery momentum in check. This proved a perfect opportunity for us to gain a greater insight into the development of the project and ask the OGI team any questions.
4.
Throughout the project, it was agreed to reconstruct the UAT process and loop this into the weekly review session. Automatically this condensed the UAT cycle down into weekly testing blocks. This gave us the opportunity to regularly feedback and discuss the development of the product directly with OGI and in turn, allowed OGI to resolve any product issues quickly and easily to keep the project moving.
“The short and concise daily meetings assisted with speeding up the process – ensuring that we and OGI were well informed at each stage of what was required of each other. This meant that queries were resolved faster and resulted in quicker delivery.”
By adopting this new way of working, OGI was able reduce the amount of time spent on delivering IHP Proxy to us by 81%*. (*81% reduction compared to the standard delivery of an IHP Plus system.)
“The excellent communication meant that, throughout the project, it felt like we had an extension of our own development team – going above and beyond our expectations.”
It was great to be part of OGI’s successful first use of Systems Thinking to understand and redesign how it approaches delivery to improve performance for the benefit of its customers. As a result, OGI is implementing Systems Thinking across its entire development delivery, keeping customers at the heart of everything they do.