JR East Information System Corporation (JEIS)
In collaboration with CreationLine Inc., yamaneco helped JR East Information System (JEIS) implement an Agile process to create better value in their development process in a limited period of three months. The following article is a summary of the case study published on CreationLine's website to show how yamaneco coached the client to improve their organization and mindset.
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Background of Introduction: Validating a foundation for agile development for faster service and value delivery
As the technical group responsible for the ICT of the JR East Group, JR East Information Systems, Inc. supports the social infrastructure by providing a wide range of system development, operation, and other services in the areas of railroad business solutions, Suica and station service solutions, lifestyle service solutions, and system infrastructure. Information Systems.
Ryo Tanaka trained as an agile coach. The Agile coaching included not only the technical aspects, but also the organizational structure and corporate culture to realize Agile development, as well as the change in the awareness of the people involved, which greatly influenced the conventional development style.
Tomohiro Hayase, Software Infrastructure Project Manager, Cloud Infrastructure Department
"We are in charge of system development for JR East, and we develop and operate systems that support the railroad infrastructure used by many people, such as Suica and operation management systems. For this reason, ensuring "safety and security" has been a top priority, and system development has been a strict waterfall process.
However, in recent years, customers have been demanding faster service delivery, and as a new measure, we have begun to verify the effectiveness of the agile development platform and deploy it internally."－Tomohiro Hayase, Manager of the Software Infrastructure Project, Cloud Infrastructure Department, explains the background behind this initiative.
Agile Coaching Significantly Transforms Corporate Culture and Awareness of Development
In this contract, GitLab training and agile coaching were adopted along with the GitLab license (Premium). The agile coaching, which took three months to complete, had a significant impact on the participants, who had been involved in waterfall development up to that point, and was extremely meaningful, but at the same time it was not easy. Tanaka, who was in charge of the training as an agile coach on CreationLine's side, said, "Up until now, everyone at JEIS has followed a waterfall style of development in a top-down culture. If you try to suddenly change from there to a bottom-up form, you need to be prepared to make the switch," he emphasizes.
Agile coaching is not only about technology, but also about organizational structure and corporate culture to realize agile development, as well as the transformation of the awareness of the people involved. The training is not limited to the usual learning style, but also provides an opportunity for participants to "experience" agile development to gain a deeper understanding.
Mr. Haruhira Nodo, Engineer, IoT and Big Data Cloud Platform Construction Project, Cloud Infrastructure Department
Mr. Haruhei Nodo, Engineer, IoT and Big Data Cloud Platform Construction Project, Cloud Infrastructure Department, commented on his impressions after actually participating in the Agile Coaching: "I learned about Agile, microservices, containers, CI/CD, and other subjects that I had heard of before, but did not fully understand the actual conditions. I was worried that I might quit during the course of the course because I was learning about subjects that I had heard of before, but did not fully understand. Naturally, we were in a very difficult situation at first, but with the coaching of Mr. Tanaka, our Agile coach, we were able to "learn by heart" Agile development by changing our corporate culture and our mindset," he said.
Effects of Agile Coaching in a Real Project
Mr. Nodo experienced the true effectiveness of the agile coaching provided by CreationLine in an actual development project. We remotely developed a full-fledged service for a customer under the Corona Disaster situation, but by utilizing our experience with agile coaching, we were able to handle the project without any discomfort at all. For example, we were able to think in terms of making improvements one after another, such as considering measures to make the tools we currently use more useful, and I feel that this is definitely due to the experience gained during the three months of agile coaching" (Nodo).
Mr. Hayase summed up the effects of the project by saying, "We implemented this project to understand and master the basics of agile development, the ideal state of agile development, and the mindset, and all the results exceeded our initial expectations. We are deeply grateful to Creation Line for their tremendous support.
It won't be long before this paradigm shift in corporate culture and awareness is reflected in the company's future services, and will be noticed by our end users.