Agile Learnings in Life Insurance

SDT implemented the Agile method of development and from a management perspective we realised the following benefits:

Quicker time to market with new systems functionality
Visibility into the software development investment we make, the Waterfall method was perceived as a big black box; we could only see results whether positive or negative after six months
Clear illustration of the business value of each of the changes we make
Effective knowledge transfer between developers as they challenge each other
Improved team work
Recognition at a personal level for developers through the visibility of what was delivered and the value that gets exposed to the rest of the organisation. People wants to show what they have done!
Benefits of new functionality are clearly demonstrated to our clients
Improved quality - work gets broken down into smaller chunks and a deliverable after 2 weeks must always be something that can work
Opened up the possibility to release code changes on a more frequent basis to clients
Major improvement in culture towards being more client focussed.
Improved turnaround time to fix issues