The (Go)SMART way to agility: managing a Scrum subproject in a waterfall environment

Abstract

At Gothaer Insurance Group, a long-term program to introduce a new policy system was terminated without the desired outcomes. A new program, GoSMART, was introduced to buy a policy system instead of developing it in-house. A team responsible for modelling insurance products decided that the waterfall approach was no longer suitable for this specific task. Intrigued by the possibilities that agile software development appeared to hold, the team adopted Scrum, hoping to improve efficiency. With no other project changing the development approach, the team was left as an agile island in a waterfall environment.