Case Study | Prosight

P&C Insurance Company Launches In-House Agile Engineering Team

BRINGING AGILE IN-HOUSE

ProSight is a mid-sized insurance company ($900M in revenue) that’s gaining major traction against the large established competition in the Property and Casualty (P&C) insurance industry. ProSight was featured on the 2014 Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private American companies. The insurer attributes this growth to its relentless focus on delivering exceptional customer value, including digital experiences.

In the past, ProSight focused on time-to-market for its digital products, making use of outside vendors for software engineering and delivery. In 2017, ProSight began the process of building industry-leading, internal teams for design, UX, and engineering. The company turned to SuperOrbital to help establish and optimize agile development and product management processes for the new team.

“The time was right for ProSight to bring our products in-house, but my team needed direction on how to hire and run an agile engineering team. SuperOrbital was just what we needed,” said Darryl Siry, President.

BEST PRACTICES PROVE INVALUABLE

Each organization is unique with is own needs and constraints. To understand how the agile process can work in a company, it’s critical to spend time understanding each part of the value chain. SuperOrbital’s workshop began with a series of cup-of-coffee conversations with both leaders and people on the ground in every part of the organization, from Product to Engineering, UX to Operations, and QA to Security.

One of the key insights gained from these conversations was that insurance is a highly regulated industry with strict oversight. Each new product is required to be filed in all fifty states—a process that can take months. This is compounded by government-mandated software updates with strict timelines. This is a big challenge, but SuperOrbital provided insights derived from its vast experience applying agile practices to shipping shrink-wrapped software in a very similar environment.

FAST ITERATION WHILE ENSURING QUALITY

After speaking with the various teams, it was clear what ProSight needed most was expertise in building and running an agile engineering organization—one that could quickly iterate to deliver customer value in the face of strict governmental oversight. SuperOrbital worked closely with the P&C company’s product and engineering teams to explain the agile process in depth—not only the theoretical underpinnings, but also the nitty gritty subtleties and challenges that only come up in practice.

"We knew we had to move to an agile process so we could iterate quickly, benefit from the fast feedback loop, and respond to customer needs rapidly – all without sacrificing quality."

SuperOrbital takes a conversational approach to learning instead of just lecturing from a podium. A loose outline of topics were provided and the basics of agile development were covered. Engineers were encouraged to direct the conversation toward topics that filled in the most important gaps for them.

“We knew we had to move to an agile process so we could iterate quickly, benefit from the fast feedback loop, and respond to customer needs rapidly—all without sacrificing quality,” noted Barninder Khurana, Sr. Director, Digital.

REAL-WORLD APPLICATION

There’s nothing worse than Agile in a vacuum. Throughout the workshop SuperOrbital focused on real-world applicability of agile practices. ProSight’s was well prepared to handle its most immediate needs—the upcoming project hand off and ramping up to hire engineers.

SuperOrbital has experience transitioning projects between teams was able to provide practical examples of what worked and what hasn’t. This includes giving practicum-based interviews to upwards of 400 engineers, with a focus on finding people who excel in a pair-programming environments.

At the conclusion of the workshop, the ProSight team was presented with a report of where the insurer is succeeding, where future challenges might lay, and suggestions for how to address them.