When DBS began their agile journey to become a digital leader, Skills Development Group partnered with them to support their agile transformation.
When DBS began their agile journey to become a digital leader, Skills Development Group partnered with them to support their agile transformation.
The Challenge
DBS Bank is a leading financial services company in Asia. Headquartered in Singapore, it has a growing presence in the region with over 22,000 employees and 280 branches across 18 markets.
DBS is internationally recognised as a digital leader in the financial industry. It has been named ‘World’s Best Digital Bank’ by Euromoney, ‘Asia’s Best Bank’ by The Banker and Euromoney, ‘Asian Bank of the Year’ by IFR Asia and ‘Safest Bank in Asia’ by Global Finance.
Recognising that the banking industry is being disrupted by new technologies, changing customer expectations and non-traditional competition, DBS sought to adopt an agile mindset and an adaptive approach to managing disruption and leveraging market changes.
The Solution
Since early 2016, DBS has partnered with Skills Development Group on their agile journey to support their transformation. This has included training nearly 900 staff in agile principles and practices including agile awareness, facilitation and iteration management, product ownership, testing, exploratory testing and test automation.
“Agile is an organisational tool," says Christine Johnson, Executive Director of Technology & Operations, DBS Bank. "We wanted to look at how we can do things differently - to contextualise banking in the digital age, to bring tech beyond projects, and to understand disruption and competition as the world changes and becomes more complex and competitive."
DBS required a methodology-agnostic agile approach that was context-dependent and found Skills Development Group offered a wide range of agile courses from foundational programs to role-based training. "We sought awareness training to support learning by doing. We did this to set people up with the right background knowledge – the what, why and how, along with an agile mindset. We could then create a training roadmap and pathways to specific roles," said Ms Johnson.
The Result
DBS is now significantly more advanced in their agile journey with high-performing teams developing and a 'one team' approach now evident.
“DBS is a 50-year old bank, with its roots as the Development Bank of Singapore, but our CEO’s vision is for a 22,000-person start-up,” said Ms Johnson.
