{"id":110,"date":"2014-05-01T18:18:29","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T18:18:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agile-egg.com\/wpagile\/?page_id=110"},"modified":"2021-01-14T19:49:35","modified_gmt":"2021-01-14T19:49:35","slug":"agile-egg-the-story","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/agile-egg.com\/wpagile\/agile-egg-the-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Agile Egg: The Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

The evolution of IT and Change at Egg<\/h2>\n

As an Internet bank, technology not surprisingly sat at the heart of everything that Egg did.<\/p>\n

Much as with the dynamic nature of all its activities, the management and governance of technology went though a number of rapid iterations in its short life.  In the early years, technology development was decentralised and managed organically in the business, with Richard Duvall in the driving seat as IT Director from before the launch of Prudential Banking, then Pete Marsden driving through the launch of Egg itself from 1997 to 1999, and Mark Nancarrow as CIO from 1999 to 2000.<\/p>\n

Dana Cuffe joined as CIO in 2000, and the IT organisation started to move towards a more centralised model.  The nature of the IT development organisation at that time was that of a highly functionally specialised terms with separately managed groups (and Heads) for Analysis & Design, Project Management, Programming and so on.  This organisational construct inevitably led to difficulties in managing and resourcing projects end-to-end and so the Programme Management group (i.e., a PMO type group) was set up under Dominic Shine in 2001 reporting to the CIO, to coordinate activities and provide a single face to the business.<\/p>\n

In this period and following, a single change portfolio was created together with a common technology investment prioritisation approach developed, where the projects were aligned with clear and measurable business outcomes.  Whilst the new approach helped in getting a clearer focus on what the business needed and investing in the right areas, it did not however provide the direct connection with IT that the business were looking for.  The Programme Management group was dismantled in mid-2003 and the Programme Managers were divided between Technology and Business change, and reorganised into the respective areas united through the single change portfolio that it was now the responsibility of the Egg business (“Outcome Managers”) to deliver.<\/p>\n

Even this change was seen to be insufficiently to meet the then perceived need to support significant technology change, and scale to support the strategic aspirations to grow Egg.   And so, the Egg Executive recruited Tom Ilube to help them, and he in turn drove the transformation from Egg IT to Egg Technology, of which the Agile Transformation of development was part of the story – and which this website commemorates.<\/p>\n

To finish this arc, Tom moved on at the end of 2004, handing the baton to Gary Price as CIO until the end of 2005, when Pete Marsden took back the helm, and Tim Allen headed up what was by then an all embracing Change & Execution function, fully integrating the various change agents including those, such as web designers, who until that point had been part of the business organisation.<\/p>\n

Beyond this? Well, the whole Egg story was unravelling by this time, the demise having started with the shutdown of the French operation in 2004, through to delisting in 2006, and the ongoing attempts to sell Egg eventually succeeding with the sale to Citigroup.<\/p>\n

And so the World moved on\u2026<\/p>\n

\"Evolution<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tom Ilube\u2019s Vision for Egg Technology<\/h2>\n

This is Tom\u2026<\/p>\n

\"Tom<\/a><\/p>\n

Tom is a successful businessman and start-up guy, as a well as a philanthropist: \u2018nuff said about all that here, you can read about his accomplishments on Linkedin<\/a> and elsewhere, and also see his spin on the world on Twitter<\/a> and his personal blog, Mr Bojangles<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I first met Tom at a breakfast meeting in the Rubens Hotel in Victoria, London SW1, in 2000.  As neither Tom nor I are engineered to be very highly performant before some time later in the morning, neither of us can really remember what it was about [For those who are students of such minutiae, it was actually 23r<\/sup>d<\/sup> November 2000 at 8am to be exact  \u2013 this meeting was probably about B2B eCommerce, and Lostwax\u2019s agent B2B negotiation technology\u2026.<\/span>Mitchell Madison, my then employer (don\u2019t mention marchFIRST)<\/em>, and Tom had some joint history with Egg, since Matt Isaacs and others from MMG supported Egg from its very early days, and Tom was providing development services with LostWax]<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Back to our story of the Agile Transformation then in 2003, Tom had what the Egg Executive wanted:<\/p>\n

somebody who understood the Internet [quote according to an unattributed source]<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2026and so Tom drew up his vision of transforming the perceived worthy but relatively dull, process driven, functionally structured \u201ccorporate\u201d Egg IT into Egg Technology…<\/p>\n

We need a technology multiplier – Paul Gratton, CEO, Egg<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…a technology partner for the Egg business, without compare: flexible and responsive, agile and commercial, with a smidgen of structure and a more product-based mind-set in how it went about its work (represented in the following diagram as \u201cVersions\u201d):<\/p>\n

\"Slide0\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The vision for Egg Technology had a core focus of<\/p>\n

\u2026 creating a great experience for our customers, drawing on the power of our people and partners<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

built on four key components:<\/p>\n