Sell-Side Technology Awards 2022: Best use of the agile methodology—Finastra

OVERVIEW

Finastra Fusion Sophis is a core component of investment banks’ front-to-back cross-asset platforms, with scalable integration and calculation capabilities. It can be seamlessly integrated into banks’ ecosystems, thanks to a wide range of representational state transfer (Rest) APIs. 

THE SOLUTION

Finastra Fusion Sophis adopted the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe 5.1) methodology seven years ago, with scrum delivery since 2015 (nine to 12 teams year-on-year in the program). The firm’s investment management business unit is implementing the SAFe Portfolio and SAFe Essentials frameworks. 

Finastra’s SAFe certificates include:

• Large number of SAFe-certified employees
• Several Release Train Engineers (RTE)-certified employees
• Many Scrum Master-certified employees (in product and service teams)

Fusion Sophis’ adoption of the Agile methodology has transformed the development and delivery of its software, allowing the delivery of multiple enablers: continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) featuring one blueprint environment up and running on a daily release candidate with thousands of automated tests, containerization, orchestration, OpenId Connect (identity layer), and single sign-on adoption. All Fusion Sophis clients have adopted the firm’s Agile delivery model, which has moved them from a single upgrade every five years to two seamless upgrades each year, featuring functional and technical benefits. 

WHAT’S TO COME

CI/CD will move toward continuous deployment. Fusion Sophis will be deployed on every release candidate to replicate a production environment. Continuous servicing of the solution will enhance high-value services for the firm’s clients (e.g. cloud managed service and application operations offering). New partnerships will be promoted with fintech firms and implementation partners in all regions to accelerate innovation and solution deployment.

During 2021, Finastra Fusion Sophis achieved: 

• Triple-digit growth in software bookings
• 10 “go-lives” at clients with an acceleration of continuous delivery and deployment (several clients migrated twice within the year)
• Reduced customer backlog by more than 30% and improved customer response time by 25%

WHY THEY WON

Agile evangelists will argue that Agile is not just a way of developing and delivering software and associated services, but the only way to do it. Finastra’s flavor of the methodology shows just how effective it can be in massively reducing development and delivery timeframes, while simultaneously reducing total cost of ownership and providing end-users with genuinely measurable and useful services.