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Thesis Project

“Analysing added value derived from combination of emerging

software development frameworks and team leadership concepts”

By Irina Semakova ID 11352868

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Table of Contents

Introduction ... 4

Case Study ... 5

Development of Demand for Compliance and Due Diligence Services ... 5

SmartKYC solution for Compliance and Due Diligence ... 6

Specifics of SmartKYC Search Tool ... 7

SmartKYC’ Language team Organisation ... 9

Goal of Company Project ... 9

Outline of Company Project ... 10

Objective of Company Project ... 10

Duration of Company Project and Deliverables ... 10

Project Flow, Activities and Tasks (Sequential order) ... 10

Way of Project Execution ... 11

Literature overview ... 12

Definitions of the Minimal Viable Product ... 12

Testing and Feedback as key features of MVP ... 12

Definition of MVP for the Company Project ... 13

Minimum Viable Team Concept ... 14

MVP and Lean Startup ... 14

Agile approach ... 15

Scrum Team Organization approach ... 16

Agile approach - Spotify Case ... 16

Agile approach - ING Case ... 17

Key findings of Software Development frameworks ... 18

Collaborative Leadership framework ... 18

Practice Leadership framework ... 19

Distributive and Collective Leadership frameworks... 19

Implications... 21

MVP Scope for Dutch Search tool ... 21

Usage of Build-Measure-Learn concept for testing ... 22

Minimal Viable Team concept within Language Team ... 23

Planning Future Product Development ... 25

Defining Scope for Future Product Development ... 25

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Prioritising Future Product Development ... 26

Following Agile principle of Responsiveness... 26

Learnings from applying MVP concept and Software development approaches ... 27

Collaborative Leadership within Language Team ... 27

Practice Leadership within Language Team ... 28

Collective Leadership within Language Team ... 29

Learnings from Analysing Leadership culture within Language Team ... 30

Discussion and Recommendations... 30

Conclusions ... 34

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Introduction

This paper is written as result of company project, during which, being part of the global team at Due Diligence and Compliance service provider SmartKYC, author developed Dutch version of the SmartKYC platform by replicating and adapting English version of the

platform for Dutch language.

SmartKYC is a software as a service provider, which develops and maintains online platform, that allows primarily banks and financial institutions as well as other companies to perform Due Diligence and Compliance required by government and financial authorities. SmartKYC platform is working as search engine which allows to search names of Entities, Individuals and Organizations in databases of sanctioned, debarred, blacklisted entities and in media, so that to eliminate and risks of doing business with those entities. The platform supports different languages for both databases and media, so clients can search for local news and announcements all around the World. The search engine for specific language is combined of lists of specific keywords and semantic rules, written in xml, that allow to retrieve only relevant news and results showing Entity’s connections to the Compliance risks. The project, developing of Dutch search tool for SmartKYC platform, required to justify and scope requirements for first release of the search tool in Dutch and execute the launch of it, including testing and quality assurance. Further on, it was required to outline following development of the tool assessing the priority of the risks at the Dutch-speaking markets. Planning and execution of the project required to apply and actively practice on daily basis several theories, concepts and frameworks, such as Minimal Viable Product, Agile and Lean approaches, which are often used in software development.

As software development process can be done on remote and doesn’t require physical presence of the team members in one location, many software companies opted to form global teams working from various locations and contributing on remote. In case of SmartKYC this decision has also been justified by the fact that native speakers of multiple languages has been required. As during the project, author has been part of global Language team, that has been working on development of different languages for SmartKYC software, it was observed that several concepts of leadership and team management, such as

collaborative, distributive and collective leadership, practice leadership, visible management and learning culture has been practiced within the team.

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The goal of this paper is to identify added value in using combination of beforementioned software development frameworks with leadership and team management concepts in context in global teams using empirical evidence of SmartKYC business case and analysing and observing application of the concepts in particular project.

Case Study

Development of Demand for Compliance and Due Diligence Services

Number of corporate scandals and fraud cases that appeared in 2000s, such as bankruptcy of Enron, fraud in Olympus, Tyco International, Tesco, cases involving government bodies, such as U.S. Navy and it’s contractors, made United States Government to create number programs and policies, such as Sarbanes-Oxley Act, whistle-blower programs and other regulations to encourage companies and financial institutions to do proper Due Diligence and Compliance checking of third parties, potential partners, suppliers, distributors, clients and investors.

Following United States Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission enforcements, Governments of other countries created similar laws and requirements. International cooperation took place, as many Sanctions, Exclusions and Debarments lists and databases, Watchlists have been unified and merged to become international. The lists are changing daily as more entities, individuals and organizations, and even vessels and aircrafts are being included in it. Managing Compliance and Due Diligence risks became one of core activities once companies started to realize risk of penalties and taxes, being

sanctioned, banned, backlisted or even dismissed because of connections to certain entities. With rapid development in last decade Due Diligence and Compliance widened in terms of industry coverage from being focused only on finance to cover manufacturing, retail and service industries. Expanding of industry coverage led to wider range of offences and corporate misconduct lists covered by due diligence: labour, environmental regulations breaches, data and internet security issues, chemical usage, unethical practices and

connections to sensitive industries (weapons, precious metals, luxury yachts, charities, etc), business in high risk countries. Every entity must comply to regulations and conduct due diligence in order to maintain reputation, keep clients, suppliers and partners, but it doesn’t

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only include self-diligence, but also checking on compliance of all the partners in supply chain and distribution.

The same way due diligence spread to whole network of partners in organizations case, it widened for individuals, such that family relationships, friends’ networks, connections to certain companies and political exposure became area of interest of companies when they perform checks on potential employees, investors, major partners and clients.

One of the key Due Diligence and Compliance risks for Banks and Financial institutions is onboarding clients who have wealth gained illegally or in suspicious manner, or who are politically exposed and/or connected to sensitive industries, countries, businesses or individuals. Financial institutions managing wealth or lending money to such entities or individuals face great penalties and legal consequences.

Facing need to effectively manage Due Diligence and Compliance, Banks and Financial Institutions want to make it in quick manner, that will allow employees to eliminate all potential risks at once and start working with the clients. Following demand, companies like SmartKYC are specializing on developing online platforms, that can allow bank employees to search potential clients' names through thousands databases/sources in different languages at once, assess severity of different risks, eliminate false positives, and produce Due

Diligence reports to protect themselves in case of questions from authorities.

SmartKYC solution for Compliance and Due Diligence

Tools like SmartKYC gather data from multiple sources such as Sanctions, Exclusions, Debarment lists, Watchlists issued by Governments and other authorities, financial

institutions such as World bank, Asian Development bank, African Development bank, ID and Credit checks a Equifax, Experian, Transunion, from corporate databases such as BvD Orbis, UK Companies House, but more importantly from media sources, search engine News, including Google, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, and Social Media such as LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Twitter, which allow to check not only official government and authorised resources but also predict future problems by screening news in media and open sources. The importance of media as a source is great, because most of the times official government lists only content data on convicted individuals and entities, when the decision has been made on the entity possessing risk, but for financial institutions it is more important to assess future risk

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associated with the party at the early stages, when they onboard client or lend money. In many cases media write about process development from initiation of the case to accusation, guilty plea and conviction. Additionally, because the nature of media and social media is to provide as many details as possible, readers know about assets, network, connections and anything that will be affected by legal enforcement. In many cases official decisions won’t mention family members, close circle or assets of individuals, unless they have been involved or questioned in case of individuals or censored, frozen or confiscated in case of assets, thus, media and social media are very important sources that can provide data about potential future risks associated with entity.

However, when bank employees check names in databases, they don’t want to see any news about the entity, but only those that indicate potential risk, so to address this issue,

SmartKYC developed and constantly improving tool, that automatically filter our include to database only those relevant news, classify search results under various categories of risks, such as Political Exposure, Legal issues, Links to Sensitive industry, High Risk Countries or Sustainability Risk Industries, Related Individuals and Entities, etc. to help clients to focus on risks that are most important for them.

Specifics of SmartKYC Search Tool

SmartKYC language team uses special lists of keywords and search rules/algorithms to return results when client initiates name search. Keywords are usually grouped in list under Specific Tag and attribute to specific category, for example list of keywords of High Risk Countries includes names of the countries and corresponding adjectives like Libya, Libyan, so that when searched name appears in the same sentence as name of the country, results will be returned to the Search Screen of the user. Snippets, or captured sentences will be displayed in list with indication of the Event Type, like High Risk Countries, date, source and Level of accuracy. User can open Snippet to read whole article and assess risk, Watched Entity will be highlighted and keywords underlined across whole article to speed up and easy reading. SmartKYC maintains two levels of accuracy in Search Results. Level 2 will capture results when Watched Entity and keywords are in the same sentence disregard semantic relation between the keyword and the Watched Entity. Thus, results can include samples like: “With the free 30-day trial of Microsoft Office 2013 Professional Plus, you can test the latest

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version of Office before buying it.” This is example of false positive, when Watched Entity Microsoft Office doesn’t have any legal issues, so special rule/algorithm should be created to eliminate such results. However, in many cases Watched Entity will be connected somehow to the event and may possess potential risk, so sample tests and additional research in media should be conducted to assess whether any relevant cases will be eliminated if case of change of algorithms or exclusion of keyword from Category List Legal. During the testing of Level 2 algorithms, Business Analysts from language team are generally focused on two objectives, first - to eliminate obvious false positives and morphological issues, for example words shooting used in context of shooting film, instead of crime, and second - identifying good sentences and structures that can be used to create Level 1 Results.

Level 1 results will show semantical connection between Watched Entity and keywords, for example, “Sukhumbhand Paribatra became Member of Parliament”. Words like became, served, was elected, etc are not only keywords themselves but show semantic connection between Watched Entity and keywords. They also can be grouped in lists under Tags and serve to return results. Not only verbs can serve as semantic connections, but also both proper and comment nouns and adjectives, for example, in sentence “Today, Mohamad Jamal

Khweis, 27, of Alexandria, Virginia, was convicted by a federal jury for providing material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist

organization” “federal jury’ will indicate status of the case, that it is not rumour, but official investigation, “material support to… a designated foreign terrorist organization” is a type of offence and connection of Watched Entity to terrorists. During the testing of Level 1

algorithms, Business Analysts usually look for lexicon and words usage, which could have resulted false positives, morphological and contextual issues.

The work on keywords libraries and Category Tags lists is complicated by the fact, that separate lists should be created for different languages. Different countries have different names of authorities, political job titles and job titles in general, this all should be catalogued, and it is constant challenge to track changes. In addition, reporters and newspapers in

different countries and cultures use different words to name the same objects. For example, what is referred to as wealth and properties in United States, will be called assets in

Singapore or Malaysia. To know the differences developers have to learn journalistic is styles in different countries and cultures by constantly reading articles or be native for the region.

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To keep keywords libraries and Category Tags lists is constant challenge, that is time, labour and resource consuming activity, which hardly can be automated in nearest future, but it helps to automate search process and increase accuracy of the results and ensure complete Due Diligence and Compliance Risk check for the client.

SmartKYC’ Language team Organisation

As the nature of language team required to have speakers of different languages from all around the world, company had created global team with member working on remote from their home countries and creating and maintaining their own language part of SmartKYC platform. Such working model required technical and organization arrangements, as team working software tools – BitBucket, team testing sessions, mails, calendar, shared repository of guides and procedures. The importance of team work was emphasized, as error in codes in one language could have stopped internal testers for whole team and even break down web-site. It was also important to know, whether any of colleague are working at the same time to avoid errors when submitting new parts of the codes and rules to the server. The supervisor used team mail and shared docs repository to inform of new topics, that need to be covered, such as wildlife trading or art smuggling, main changes to the English version that might need to be reflected in other languages, such as reclassification of event or adding of new event types such as Missing Person or Financial Connections to High Risk Countries. At the same time, team has used mail, Skype, TeamViewer, shared docs and repositories to report on progress, communicate back questions, issues, bugs and suggestions for new topics. Work on remote in global teams, when one never physically meets other teammates, requires significant amount of trust to others, self-starting attitude, sense of self-responsibility and self-confidence, as communication via mail and Skype is limited to some extend by words and requires ability to carefully and precisely to put in words technical issues or details. It also requires ability to earn on your own, investing significant time in research, self-study, trial and testing. Work on remote requires dedication, self-organization and most important self-motivation to complete project on your own without direct supervision from others.

Goal of Company Project

The goal of company Project is to apply in practice the software development technics and create, develop and launch MVP which will expose SmartKYC to new marketing

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opportunities, at the same time observing how global teams working on remote can be managed effectively to create final product. The research question of this company project is what is the added value created when global software development teams organised to work on remote and possessing the culture of collaborative leadership create and maintain products using MVP concept and Agile and Scrum approaches.

Outline of Company Project

Objective of Company Project

Given the company introduction and nature of business, the objective of the company project was to create Dutch version of the platform, such that clients could perform search in Dutch on SmartKYC platform. Considering limited duration of the project, it was required to identify and execute scope of Minimal Viable Project, that would have allowed to launch search engine for Dutch language. From content point of view, it meant to create lists of Dutch keywords and set of Rules, that would allow clients to see results in Dutch when they perform screening of Entity.

Duration of Company Project and Deliverables Duration: 3 Month (22 May – 18 August 2017) Major Deliveries:

1. Scope of MVP for Dutch search tool (doc format)

2. Developing of MVP - Set of Semantic Rules and lists of Keywords for Dutch search tool (xml format)

3. Future Schedule Plan of product development (excel format) Project Flow, Activities and Tasks (Sequential order)

Stage 1: 3 Weeks

– Introduction, including testing results in English, learning the scope of the risks and topics covered, training in software usage, database navigating, etc.

– Translation of basic keywords list from English (xml format) Stage 2: 2 Weeks

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– QA and testing in English with daily delivery of samples of errors and bugs, including suggestions for fixing (Google Doc format)

Stage 3: 4 Weeks

– Writing Level 1 Rules for Category Legal, QA, testing (xml format in Eclipse)

– Translation of generic Corporate Compliance keywords list from English (xml format in Eclipse)

Stage 5: 2 Weeks

– Writing Level 1 Rules for Categories Biography, Domicile Indicia, QA, testing (xml format in Eclipse)

Stage 6: 2 Weeks

– Writing Level 1 Rules for Category Adverse Media, QA, testing (xml format in Eclipse) – Testing of Level 1 Rules for Categories Legal, Biography, Domicile Indicia, Adverse Media

– Outlining plan for further product development (Excel format) Way of Project Execution

Most of the daily work was carried in xml, using programs such as Geany and Eclipse. English version of the Keywords, Tags, Rules was used as a sample of structure and content and guidance on what kind of news should be captured under every Category and Event Type, however, many Rules and keywords have been adapted for Dutch media. Bitbucket team reporting has been used to report and record progress. Google docs has been used for QA and testing, when samples of bugs and errors had to be communicated to development team. Doc and Excel has been used to scope MVP and schedule of the Project itself as well as too outline plan for Mail and future product development. Skype has been used for

communication.

The following sections will give overview of product development frameworks as Minimal Viable Product concept, Lean and Agile approaches, that have been used during the project execution, as well as human resource and team management concepts, that allow people work on remote independently, but be part of the global team and contribute to completion of the

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large project. It will be also analysed how specifically each framework was applied at the project and how their combination allowed for project, business model and company to succeed, what are recommendations on further handling of the project and possible improvements that can be implemented to handle the team working on remote.

Literature overview

Given limited nature of the project, 3 months, and nature of the product as software development, following frameworks have been applied to execute the project on time and effectively: Minimal Viable Product framework, Agile and Lean approaches, that will be analysed in following section. Analysis of leadership and team management theories, such as collaborative, distributive and collective leadership, practice leadership, visible management and learning culture, will help to understand, how team worked, was able to complete project and will sustain to continue work.

Definitions of the Minimal Viable Product

Minimal viable product was first defined as “MVP is not a minimal product, it is a strategy and process directed toward making and selling a product to customers” by Robinson in 2001 (Robinson, 2001) and since then redefined by number of scholars like Reis and Blank (Reis, 2009, Blank, 2010) and by entrepreneurs, who dealer with it practice. Lenarduzzi and Taibi who studied definitions of minimal viable product point out, that none of the definitions published in last 15 years has been accepted or used as standard definition (Lenarduzzi, Taibi 2016). However, they identify following common features among definitions: “minimum effort”, “minimum set of features” (Lenarduzzi, Taibi 2016) from the business point of view and “maximum customers validated learning”, “customer feedback / evaluation” from customers point of view (Lenarduzzi, Taibi 2016). Usage of words minimum and maximum indicates, that the set or amount is not predefined in definition and needs to be decided in every particular case, thus the team, which is developing product is entirely responsible for it starting actual development.

Testing and Feedback as key features of MVP

The internal purpose of gathering feedback from customers is to test not only main

hypothesis regarding demand and added-value, but also to try out different configurations of product, that will be the most cost-effective for company and comfortable to produce. Kromer suggests Business Model Canvas as the way to test MVP, as he emphasize, that

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“MVP is not just product” (Kromer, 2014), other parts as Customers, Value Proposition, Channels, Relationships (Kromer, 2014) should be analysed for MVP to be successful. Some definitions point out, that MVP is targeting “early adopters” (Rao, 2014, Miski, 2014, Agostinho, 2015) to gather feedback on the product, and Agostinho particularly mentions that sometimes they will use product for free in return to feedback (Agostinho, 2015). That

definitions can be applied to new products that will create new category, so that the goal of MVP is not only to gather customers feedback (Mejia, 2013) using A/B testing (Kniberg, 2015), amount of the sales to first customers and other measures, but also to validate the added value of the product, estimate potential demand and plan future development based on feedback. It can be also applied to start-ups, which have to test new products before investing in mass production or proceeding with major investments. Miski summarises giving

following explanation of imperfection of MVP: “MVP starts the learning and building process quickly. It allows the start-up team to collect as maximum validated learning about customers with least effort. The goal is to test the fundamental business hypothesis. It is not meant to be perfect - meant for Early Adopters” (Miski, 2014).

However, majority of definitions do not specify the company business state and degree of invention, they generalise, that MVP consists of minimal set of features to allow product to be launched as fast as possible to satisfy perceived customers’ needs, so the company can plan next steps in developing product based of feedback.

Definition of MVP for the Company Project

Analysing the MVP definitions, that have been defined over last 15 years, we try to find one, that would be most suitable for the situation of developing new variation of the software product in tight deadlines to be able to launch it to customers showing added value,

promising and scheduling continuous improvement and development. In case of this project it’s important to point out, that it’s not development of completely new product of category which is not known to customer, but recreation of the version of existing software allowing performance in Dutch language, which is technically considered as creation and development of new major feature of the online platform, that if required can be separated as a product on itself. Considering these requirements, the most suitable and similar in terms of objectives will be definition by Hixson et al.: “MVP is a product with a minimum feature set targeting market opportunities and validate its value and growth hypotheses as soon as possible”

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(Hixson et al, 2013). The key elements of this definition are “minimum set of features”, target on “market opportunities”, validation of “growth hypotheses” and timing “as soon as

possible”. The combination of these elements points out, that there is perceived demand in product, and probably, potentially competitors already have it in portfolio or as a feature and company has to launch new product as soon as possible to estimate its potential for growth and allocate resources accordingly.

Minimum Viable Team Concept

Different concepts emerged since invention of MVP concept, such as Minimum Viable Technology, Minimum Viable Co-founder, Minimal Viable Team. For the purposes of the analysed project we will analyse concept of Minimum Viable Team, as it has been applied to the Language Team at SmartKYC.

The concept of Minimum Viable Team is similar to the core meaning of MVP and states, that when the company or team is at early stage of development of the project, key functions should be listed and filled first, the more abstract role and functions should be left for next stage of development. Kromer comments, that no matter the role, people should be

committed to the idea and work they are doing (Kromer, 2011). O’Donnell encourages to simplify roles, gain expertise and learn to perform roles out of current expertise (O’Donnell, 2012). He says, “more and more designers are learning how to code and getting a deeper understanding of how the technology works that they're designing for--because those are the constraints they need to keep in mind when figuring out solutions to user problems”

(O’Donnell, 2012). That example gives idea, that people in team should be willing to learn others’ roles in order to better understand what are the tasks of others and how they can help others to perform better, which in turn will help to develop MVP more effectively.

It is important to note, that MVP concept only deals with first release of the product, thus future development is not outlines by it and companies using MVP to create and launch products need to use other frameworks and concepts to proceed with product development and make it sustainable and stable.

MVP and Lean Startup

As mentioned above, in several definitions MVP has been considered as part of start-up development cycle, for example, as part of Lean Startup methodology, which was first introduced by Reis in 2008 (Reis, 2008). Lean Startup methodology rapidly developed since

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then and was verifies by number of successful companies, such as Zappos, Amazon, Spotify, etc. The core principals of Lean Startup have been “dramatically lower development costs, faster time to market, and higher quality products in the years to come” (Reis, 2008). The key factors as “low development costs”, "faster time to market” and "higher quality in future” indicate, that Lean Startup theory has MVP concept as base, but also covers all other aspects of firm, such as operations, finance, sales, marketing, etc. As this concept is not concerned of company functions other than product development, we will focus only on learnings and insights, that can be applied for product itself, except MVP, two concepts outlined by Reis will be relevant: build-measure-learn and innovation accounting (Reis, 2015). Build-measure-learn principal introduces the cycle consisting of building MVP, measuring customers

feedback, learning from it and building next release of the product. Innovation Accounting also focused on measuring progress, setting up milestones and prioritising work (Reis, 2015), which is very important once first release have been launched, feedback gathered and work on next releases has started.

Agile approach

Another approach, that have been used to plane and schedule future development of the project in Agile approach, which have been invented and mostly used for software

development. The term Agile was first mentioned and applied to the set of methodologies and principals used by 17 software developers, who gathered to discuss their ways of work in 2001 in Snowbird, Utah. The set of principals lined out at that time became the “Manifesto for Agile Software Development” (Agile Manifesto Authors, 2001). The core for principals as: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools, Working software over

comprehensive documentation, Customer collaboration over contract negotiation, Responding to change over following a plan (Agile Manifesto Authors, 2001), were manifested to opposite traditional waterfall approach to development.

Authors recognised the need to respond to fast changing customer demands with frequently updates release of software, they put documentation and bureaucracy out of priority and in some way even neglected the plan. At the same time, they valued a lot individuals and interactions believing, that those can be better cause of progress than tools and processes. Many frameworks have evolved as way of work under Agile, such as Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programming (XP), Crystal, Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM),

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Feature-Driven Development (FDD), sometimes even Lean Startup is recognised as one of the Agile frameworks.

Scrum Team Organization approach

The most popular Agile methodology is Scrum, which focuses on five core values as Focus, Courage, Openness, Commitment, Respect. Working in (Scrum Alliance, 2017). Small cross-functional teams consisting of Product Owner, Project Manager, Business Analyst and Scrum Master work on development of the project or product communicating progress to the

customers via often print releases of updated software, usually every two weeks. As a team, they are autonomous and professionally equipped to complete the project. Product owner is responsible for business, commercial success and prioritises the development using feedback from customers, business sense and needs and communicating team, success, progress and issues to the rest of the company. Project Manager is responsible for technical execution and communication with R&D and Operations departments to make sure, that the product is developed and synchronised with other products in portfolio, Business Analyst works on translating business requirements to technical languages, keeps backlog of tasks and requests up to date, defines Acceptance Criteria and Definition of Done (DoD), which specify set of requirements for software to meet in order to be released and satisfy customer, tests sprints and performs Quality Assurance (QA) before release and makes sure, that all requirements are fulfilled. Scrum Master oversees team work, motivates and inspires, makes sure that the team makes progress and follows its goals.

The Scrum team works close together on daily basis, with updates during daily Stand-up meeting and openness of communication at any time of the day. Team members are usually committed to the mission of the project and feel valuable. Product owner and Scrum master are responsible for focusing team on its goals and encouraging initiative and active problem-solving approach to work. Mutual trust is built based on respect and recognition of each other’s expertise. Any conflicts should be discussed in between team members openly and solution should be based on compromise which will satisfy all parties.

Agile approach - Spotify Case

Agile methodology developed rapidly over past 15 years, however, until nowadays, there is no unified definition of Agile, but as many companies applied it in their business

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own meaning into it, modified it and wrote down own scenario and plan of actions. For example, Spotify used Agile methodology to make whole company flexible, fast responding and developing mechanism, to perform as entire “agile company” (Kniberg, 2012).

Independent cross-functional teams – squads, similar to Scrum framework team set up, have been formed, each with long-term goal to build and improve one part of the Spotify product portfolio, Android client application, radio or backend system (Kniberg, 2012). All squads had complete set of professionals who could work isolated as a team and come up and execute the solution, practically, they were small startups inside corporation. Squads have been encouraged to use all Agile frameworks, such as Scrum and Kanban, as well as Lean Startup principals, such as MVP, A/B testing and mix them if necessary (Kniberg, 2012). Organization-wise, following Agile and Scrum approaches, every squad had Product owner, who was prioritising the work and was responsible for both, technical and business aspects and values. Agile coach has been assigned to every squad to facilitate and encourage constant improving, any technical and business issues could have been solved by main organization. Because every squad acted as a small startup, it was possible achieve main Agile principals: People and interaction have been priority, as in small team every member could voice out and feel the influence of work. Principal of working Software has been achieved, as it was easy to sync the work and troubleshoot inside small team, thus there was no bureaucracy. Every team also owned its own processes and could change and improve following the needs, so being flexible and adaptable over plan. Customer collaboration was ensured by frequent releases and multiple tests and by Product owner, who tracked commercial value.

Agile approach - ING Case

Another example of using Agile, not in startup, is Dutch bank ING, which used Agile to make its business transformation, Schlatmann, Chief operating officer of ING at the time of introduction of Agile in 2015, described Agility as “flexibility and the ability of an

organization to rapidly adapt and steer itself in a new direction. It’s about minimizing

handovers and bureaucracy, and empowering people” (Jacobs, et al., 2017). ING has been in transformation phase for last decade (Jacobs, et al., 2017) and introduced multidisciplinary teams and “end-to-end principle” to make everybody “focused on solving the client’s needs and united by a common definition of success” (Jacobs, et al., 2017). The company was trying to distance from traditional goals, objectives and roles of finance, marketing and become client-oriented bank.

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Key findings of Software Development frameworks

All frameworks described above have been first invented and developed over last 15 years, apart from being mostly tailored for software development. Minimal Viable Product concept is start point for product development and focuses primary on being responsive and satisfying clients demands as soon and as much as possible. MVP has key constraint of minimal efforts and sources to be used to provide set of minimum product features, but at the same time the concept targets early adopters and encourages them to provide feedback, so the company can learn as much as possible about customers' requirements and get directions for future

development. The Minimal Viable Team concept is developed based on similar principle, that new teams should use minimum headcount to fill the most important roles first and that some team members can execute multiple roles and interchange them when necessary.

MVP concept is closely tightened to the Lean Startup framework, which cover broader base including not only product development, but also operations, finance, sales and marketing. Lean Startup is promoting lower costs, high speed responsiveness and faster time to market, promising at the same time higher quality in future. Agile approach and Scrum team

organization outline possible way of MVP development after first release. Agile supports often releases of new product version to ensure responsiveness to fast-changing customers' demands. It also helps to keep the backlog of features requested and prioritise them while scheduling sprints. Scrum approach helps to organise teams working in Agile environment by promoting smaller teams, which are sustainable on itself and are able to complete the project independently. Despite small size, teams have roles that are responsible for all areas of the project, as Product Owner is responsible for business side of the project, Project Manager handles technical execution and so on.

All frameworks analysed above have emphasised the importance of the teams and aimed for every member to work on common final goal. Recognising the importance of motivation and dedication of the team members to the project and success of the whole business, we will analyse below some leadership practices, team organization and management theories, that focus on that issue.

Collaborative Leadership framework

The phenomenon of Collaborative Leadership has been described and analysed by number of scholars like Kanter (Kanter, 1983), Chrislip and Larson (Chrislip, Larson, 1994), Denis (Denis, et al, 2001) who concluded, that success of whole organization depends from

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leadership skills of the management, who heed to deliver results across firm; the crucial factor for success are not formal relationship, but interpersonal connections. Process leadership described by Kotter (Kotter, 2001), who emphasises, that leadership is different from management, the former dealing with complexity while the leadership is ability to manage the change. Kotter says, that both are important and complimentary for organization and can’t substitute each other (Kotter, 2001). He also mentions, that most organizations are “over-managed and under-led (Kotter, 2001), thus pointing out to the importance for

organization to actively seek, develop and encourage leaders.

Practice Leadership framework

Practice leadership described by Kouzes and Posner (Kouzes, Posner, 1990) analysed credibility as crucial factor enabling leaders to gain trust and inspire to follow. They also considered what qualities leaders should have and what are the challenges that leaders have when they build credibility (Kouzes, Posner, 1990). They concluded that exemplary

leadership is the key for building trust (Kouzes, Posner, 1995). Kouzes and Posner

emphasised and analysed following leadership practices: challenging the process, inspiring a shared vision, enabling others to act, modelling the way, and encouraging the heart (Kouzes, Posner, 2002). Later they named leading by example “visible management” (Kouzes, Posner, 2002), the practice that show the desired behaviours and commitment by real example, promotes the values and principals of the organization inspiring and encouraging followers. Torres analysed the qualities of leader, such as Honesty, Forward-Looking, Inspiring, and Competency (Torres, 2009), that inspire others to follow. He lines out logic of

leader-follower relationship as following: leader-followers want to see leaders who care about them, to see that there is relationship between them, in return to feeling of relationship followers can trust leaders and consider them as partners, thus followers commit to relationship with leader and to the main goals as consequences (Torres, 2009).

Distributive and Collective Leadership frameworks

Distributive and collective leadership practices are variations of Collaborative leadership. Denis et al. analyse how “strategic change can be managed in pluralistic organizations where power is diffuse and objectives are divergent” (Denis, et al 2001). They hypothesise, “that the creation of a collective leadership group in which members play distinct but tightly-knit and complementary roles is a critical factor in achieving substantive change” (Denis, et al 2001). In pluralistic context Strategic leadership is collective, processual, dynamic and

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organizational phenomenon (Denis, et al 2001). Collectiveness of the leadership means that to achieve common goal several individuals are required to perform making their own contribution complimenting each other (Denis, et al 2001). It also corresponds to distributive leadership approach, that defines, that every individual performs its own part of leaderships responsibilities and completes its own part of work contributing to overall success.

Processual phenomenon focuses on mobilization and motivation, tactics, that leaders use to promote organizational values and principles (Denis, et al 2001). Dynamic phenomenon describes the changing nature and roles of leaders, showing that leadership influence organizations as whole, and also individuals who perform leading roles, thus Strategic Leadership is continuous and never static phenomenon (Denis, et al 2001). Leaders can influence organization at least three ways: symbolic, substantive and political (Denis, et al 2001). Supra-organisational phenomenon shows that leadership spreads beyond organization and its performance (Denis, et al 2001). It also points out, that common public known and developed leadership practices outside organisation may influence leadership inside organisation and shape leaders’ roles and behaviour.

Collective leadership doesn’t have common definition, it’s still developing phenomenon. Chirichello defines collaborative leadership as a culture which allows followers to become leaders and leader to realize the importance and positive effects of mutuality and synergy over isolationism and individualism (Chirichello, 2001). He also emphasises the importance of principalship in schools, which can’t be replaced by collaborative leadership. The idea of co-principalships and developing leaders by practice and on-job training, which was

suggested for schools, can be applied in any business, that seeks continuity in leadership and business.

Cases of collaborative leadership have been analysed by scholars, for example, half-century long success story of All Blacks team has been studied by Johnson et al. (Johnson et al., 2012). It was concluded, that together with half-formal strong senior leadership structure, that promoted learning culture and learning leadership, the team practices collective leadership with total commitment, trust and honesty in self- and team evaluation.

Analysing team failures, Lencioni identifies five major dysfunctions of the teams as Absence of trust, Fear of conflict, Lack of Commitment, Avoidance of accountability, Inattention to results Lencioni (2002). Collaborative leadership and its variation, such as collective and distributive leaderships address all those dysfunctions in a way, that every team member feels

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responsibility and own contribution to results, so that triggers commitment and dedication to the team. Leaders in collaborative culture build trust and prevent conflicts by promoting openness and transparency.

In this chapter, we have analysed several emerging approaches to product and software development, that were focused on maximizing customers satisfaction and building exactly the product that is desired in minimum amount of time. We have also analysed theories of team organization and leadership, that help to motivate each member to contribute to final goal, take on leadership responsibilities and initiative. In next chapter we will analyse how those theories and frameworks have been combined together to make particular team in SmartKYC company to successfully execute project and be sustainable.

Implications

This chapter will analyse the application of theories, frameworks and concepts described in previous chapter to project in SmartKYC, it will also attempt to identify and list out how theories could have been applied better in particular project and in general. MVP as software development framework has been applied to the project from very beginning – planning stage, and has been key concept throughout the execution of the Project. Agile approach has been applied for scheduling execution of the project and to plan future development. The team organization structure and way of management have been observed, as it has been formed before the project, and as a reflection team management concepts, such as Collaborative Leadership framework, had been identified that helped team to work effectively.

MVP Scope for Dutch Search tool

In case of SmartKYC, the objective of the project was to create Dutch version of software, in particular, set of rules and keywords, which will follow and replicate English structure, but be adapted for Dutch language, vocabulary and news writing style allowing users of SmartKYC platform to search and analyse results in Dutch. Thus, first step in approaching the project was to identify the scope of keywords and rules using minimal viable product framework, so that the Dutch language search feature can be presented to clients and work properly on basic level adding value for existing international clients and giving company competitive

advantage and marketing exposure in Dutch-speaking markets or to clients interested to perform check on Dutch/Belgian/Benelux citizens.

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It was defined, that major part of the clients are financial institutions and insurance

companies, which consider Legal Issues as major concern, when they analyse results of the search on Entity, so it was crucial at first release to have not only Level 2 results, but very accurate Level 1 results, which were combination of semantic rules and Tags aimed to generate Snippets that had confirmation that Watched Entity was involved in legal issues. The requirement for Level 1 rules was that given results in Level 1, client won’t even need to look at level 2 results. As for other Categories, it has been decided, that Level 2 results will be sufficient enough for first release, which meant that translation set of general keywords used in English for English was required.

It was also important, that keywords and rules were adapted and followed Dutch/Belgian newspapers writing style, so that vocabulary and figures of speech used by journalists were included. Thus, minimal viable product was combination of two parts: set of general keywords used to pull out Level 2 results, set of rules and tags that allowed to pull Level 1 results, both of them had to be replication of English version, but with adaptation to Dutch language, so that, if for example there was any legal term, type of offence or punishment, specific to Dutch language, it had to be included. It specially applied to political job titles tag, which allowed pulling results for Political Exposure Category and consisted from general titles like President, mayor, minister, but also special titles. One of the lists as Regulation Authorities list has been specific for every language, as names of courts and other

prosecution institutions have been unique in every country, for example Dutch language list included “College van Beroep voor het bedrijfsleven” and “Hoge Raad der Nederlanden” and Belgian main authorities like “Arbeidsrechtbank van de eerste aanleg” and “Hof van assisen West-Vlaanderen”. In terms of execution it required significant amount of time to translate keywords and validate their usefulness by finding sample of their usage in news. The same principal applied to Dutch specific terms, that were extracted from legal documents and tested on appearance in news, as many times newspapers have been using variations of the same terms and names of Regulation Authorities, for example, “Hoge Raad der Nederlanden” could have been mentioned as “De Hoge Raad” or just “Hoge Raad”.

Usage of Build-Measure-Learn concept for testing

The testing and using of build-measure-learn concept had become crucial part once first set of keywords have been uploaded into the system and first Rules on Investigation and Trial have

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been written, so that results on Level 2 and Legal Issues Category Level 1 results started to come up if the search on Watched Entity had been performed with Dutch language settings. In case of the project the testing has been performed not by customers, as defined in MVP concept, but by Dutch developer and supervisors. Dutch developer has been responsible for accuracy of results in terms of context and meaning, Language team supervisors has been checking on discrepancies, code errors that could have cause bugs in program and break-down of the search algorithm leading to shut break-down of the platform. For example, developer has been responsible for identifying any morphing would have led to capturing irrelevant results, the simple example of it is the word ‘stak’ (stabbed), morphing of which should be prohibited, otherwise many other morphed words with different meanings could have been perceived by the program as keywords. The developer had also to be careful testing inserting as keywords words with multiple meanings and words, that could have had different meaning in other languages, for example Dutch particle ‘van’ means type of the car in English, and that keywords had been used in one of English Tags connected to vehicles, thus it was important to restrict language in both cases.

The nature of testing requires that as many as possible tests are performed, preferably, by different people, thus, in case of analysed project, both the analyst and supervisors have been testing the results and looking for programming errors, as nature of work of Dutch developer requires to know basics of xml coding to write semantic rules using keywords and

programming language to capture desired sentences and return them in results of the user search. Supervisors have been looking at the created rules and questioning whether they can be simplified and more Tags can be used, so that the search engine works faster and uses less operating memory to process request. For example, for the EventType Arrest, which was created to groups articles that point out that Watched Entity have been arrested, it was requested to create “verb rule” which will have verb arrest and its variations such as capture, pick up, so the string of keywords in Dutch looked like: aangehouden | gearresteerd(|en) | arresteren | aanhouden | opgepakt.

Minimal Viable Team concept within Language Team

The scope of MVP in given project was limited to Rules and keywords pack, because the technical structure, design of platform, news crawlers, thus Dutch language pack required minimal technical development of the platform itself. This case is similar to any platform, like Facebook or Google, which has developed and included option in Dutch language. The

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execution required minimal communication with teams other than language team, which is not typical for MVP project in Startup company, where in most cases whole company works on developing and launching the product. However, it didn’t affect the spirit of the team members, who were committed and worked learning each other’s roles according to Minimal Viable Team concept.

As was mentioned before, the error in the code in one Language pack could have affected other languages and even stop work of the platform, thus when developers performed tests, they looked out for errors and flagged out to supervisors if they had been caused by others. Such way of identifying and reporting errors has been outlined in Process Guides to simplify fixing process, so that developer who identified errors in different language pack didn’t waste time on trying to get insight into different language code, semantics and morphology, but reported to supervisors, who could assign the error, estimate the severity of the case, how much whole system have been affected and return system to back up version if required. Despite the fact, that developers have been restricted to fix errors of other it didn’t affect their dedication to the whole project and willingness to work together as team. It was also

beneficial, that most of language team members spoke at least three languages, thus could spot language errors of others and suggest solution, but the fixing of the issue have been always the task of the developer of that language, who knew the entire system of keywords, tags and rules for particular language.

By forming team of developers, who knew multiple languages, company has followed one of Lean Startup principles namely “lower cost development”. Some languages, that were of low priority development, as Portuguese and Italian, have been handled by the same developer. Simplified Chinese, Mandarin and Cantonese have been handled by one developer as well because of the similarity of the languages. Organization wise, all Language Team members also been working on remote, as it was cheaper, faster and more troublesome to hire them as external consultants instead of bringing whole team together in office in one location. Physical distance also didn’t matter much as every team member worked on different part of the platform and didn’t have need to interact with others, nevertheless, team forms of

communication as Bitbucker, mail, Skype, TeamViewer and shared repositories has been way of sharing and exchanging information, updates, suggestions, etc.

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Planning Future Product Development

Once Minimal Viable Product – Search function in Dutch – has been developed, tested and deployed, it has become important to plan and schedule future development to satisfy customers’ needs and expectations, that they can search in Dutch not only accurate Level 1 results in Legal Issues Category, but also in other Categories, or maybe in specific Category relevant for Dutch, Belgium and whole Benelux. The principal of innovation accounting has been applied to list down milestones of Dutch language pack development.

Defining Scope for Future Product Development

Major Dutch news have been scanned to identify the topics, that were the most mentioned in domestic/European context, were specific for Netherland or Benelux Region or had

international coverage, but local influence or developments. For example, to topic of

corporate misconduct has been identified as one of important ones, as Volkswagen emission scandal even created special word ‘sjoemelsoftware’ (cheating software), which has been voted Dutch word of the year 2015 (Pieters, 2015), another important topic for development has been Link to High Risk Countries, as it’s important for banks not too handle any money of terrorists’ suspects or supporters. Milestones have been created for next releases of the Search algorithm with EventTypes like Residence and Financial connections in High Risk Country to be in highest priority, EventTypes like Environmental Damage, Fine and Investigation in Sustainability Category to be in high priority.

Using Backlog for Future Product Development

Planning future development and expansion of the Dutch language pack and topics covered, team has been using backlog concept and sprint release concepts used in Scrum. Sprints release schedule allowed company to plan development of Dutch language pack and make sure, that software is updated on regular basis, so that company can present new major development to the clients from marketing point of view and keep up with their expectations regarding improvements and coverage of topics. Backlog was needed to store and prioritise the requests and tasks that have to be executed for every release. For example, it was decided, that Sustainability Category has more value to the clients than High Risk Category

EventTypes such as Asylum, Residence and Origin, that focused on refugees, asylum seekers and people with dual nationalities from High Risk Countries. While it was recognised, that clients who are associated to High Risk Countries such as Iran, Belorussia, Angola, Syria, Libya, etc, might have possessed some risk for banks, however, the thread of doing business

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with companies who could be fined and required to draw out large amounts of funds from their business to pay those fines was much larger.

Prioritising Future Product Development

However, prioritising of Sustainability Category has caused some discussions, as

operationally it required much more time and effort to find relevant samples and draw Rules to capture cases in news, as most of the time, Sustainability cases have been unique for each company and there were few verbal constructions that have been used on regular basis, thus it would have had required much more time to create Category and make it ready for release, thus it was decided to work on two topics simultaneously. Level 1 Rules for topic Individuals linked to High Risk Countries could have been completed within one sprint, as there were a lot of news about Syrian refugees in Netherlands and it was easy to find text samples and apply sentence structures to other countries. Level 1 Rules for Sustainability have been divided onto three parts: EventTypes Environmental damage, Animal treatment, Community relations grouped by the type of issue, EventTypes Investigation, Trial, Fines grouped by the stage the process have been in and EventTypes Controversy and Accusations groups by uncertainty of the situation, all three groups have been spread across 3 Sprints with priority given to the Type of issue group of EventTypes.

Following Agile principle of Responsiveness

However, following Agile principal of Responsiveness over planning, the team have been flexible and allowed to deviate itself from the plan in case of news breaking out, that could have required immediate development and release of other Categories. For example, any event, such Panama Papers or simultaneous hacker attack on multiple online platforms, would make developers across team to deviate from their own plans and trigger creation of special rules to cover those topics. It was also considered, that breaking news would have effect only Dutch news and region, for example, involvement of Shell Top Management in politics in Nigeria to control the resources and make sure to have business in the country. Despite the topics has been prioritised, the releases scheduled and planned, the team kept the daily interaction discussing whether any news are significant enough to trigger immediate customers interest. There was also a list of small clients requests to capture specific industry events like trading of rhino horns, ivory trade and smuggling, which could have been

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executed within half hour. Such requests have been put by clients servicing team in separate backlog, and executed by team members in their respective languages on daily basis.

Learnings from applying MVP concept and Software development approaches

MVP concept has proved to be useful tool for scoping project which has short timeline and requires to create and release product for purposes of testing it internally, seeking customers feedback and exposing company to new market opportunities. With lists of keywords and minimal set of rules the team was able to build simple search tool that allowed to pool results of Level 2 across all Categories and also to get more accurate results at Level 1 for most popular and generic Category Legal, with supplements of Entities backgrounds as Biography and Domicile details. That set was enough to create demo for customers and encourage customers who performed search in other languages to test Dutch Language as well and give feedback. The key benefits of MVP approach in this case have been ability to deliver product fast and flexibility in defining initial scope.

Agile approach has been used to scope, prioritise and schedule future product development, thus, allowing further flexibility and responsiveness to the market. However, the possible disadvantage of Agile approach for scheduling is that some customers request will be put at the end of backlog queue due to insignificant business impact on all customers or difficulty of execution, however, those demands could be crucial for particular client. There also might be potential conflict between customers' demands and ability and willingness of the team to satisfy it. As it was observed during the planning stage, the highly demanded Corporate Sustainability Category has been estimated hard to execute and could have not been fitted in duration of one Sprint. To avoid such conflicts, Scrum approach helps to make collective team decision which will satisfy all team members, those who have to deliver product to the customers and those who execute the development.

Collaborative Leadership within Language Team

The work on remote in global team, that has limited communication opportunities requires a lot of discipline, self-motivation, dedication and commitment from team members, who a work every day on their own and don’t have anybody next to them to micromanage or speed up the work. In case of SmartKYC, it was more complicated, that some parts of the work only that particular member of the team, who knew the language, could execute. It concerned the construction of the rules, choice of keywords for the library and evaluation of the

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accuracy of results. Other members of the team could only help by showing examples of their work and solutions for some complicated cases, that could have been replicated in other languages. Supervisors provides generic guidelines and explanations of the topics, that had to be covered and also could provide training, advice, technical support and QA in areas that concerned programming language and system work (see Picture 1 for Language Team Structure). Thus, content wise, every team member was responsible for its own part of project, separate language, which already predetermined collaborative environment with distributive leadership, where everybody was specializing in his own area, was respected for it and trusted to complete the work.

Picture 1: Language Team Structure

Practice Leadership within Language Team

It was important, that by practicing dedicated, accurate and scrupulous work Language team supervisors shown example of motivation, long-term commitment to the whole project, thus supervisors of the Language Team implemented practice leadership and “visible

management”. One of supervisors have been responsible for English version of the Search tool and worked on polishing English results to be as much full and accurate as possible, communicating at the same time major changes, that might be beneficial to apply in other languages. Team members also could see, how every small detail have been examined and changed if necessary preparation to new release, clients testing or presentation. The work was also organised to be as transparent as possible, team workplace at Bitbucket allowed

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well as to see what are the changes, that others have done. This allowed team members to estimate their work efficiency comparing to others and try to perfect and speed up

development. Supervisors as well were part of transparent work progress reporting, as they have managed changes on clients’ requests, fixed errors and bugs, and those changes have been shown in Bitbucket reports.

For new members of the team, the learning practice was applied with on-job training process organised in such way that they could learn directly from supervisors and other members, as Eclipse program, where repository of files, keywords and rules was stored, allowed every member to have latest copy of all files, that compiled the search in all languages. The process of maximum openness and trust from very beginning allowed new members to feel

significance of their work and feel importance of the work.

Collective Leadership within Language Team

It was also important to show that team members made valuable contributions and could see results of their work in short term, thus they were encouraged to do a lot of testing using the tool to replicate clients experience and see result, evaluate accuracy, estimate the fullness of the results from clients prospective and work on improvements, corrections and new rules and keywords to enhance clients experience. The sense of satisfaction in results and valuable contribution made every member the expert and leader in his own part of the project, which allowed to keep motivation and inspiration for long term. It also triggered initiation, as team members could offer new topics, EvenTypes, keywords, that could have been important or specific for their language and region to be added to the general scope and be translated in different languages. The importance of the suggestions has been judges by supervisors by other team members who could support the idea, if it was also actual for their language. Practice of initiative corresponds to phenomenon of collective leadership, where every individual contributes to the success of whole project.

Collective leadership has proved to be good practice for identifying and fixing errors, that could harm the whole project. In case any member has found issues, that caused errors in algorithms and even break down of online platforms, he or she could perform primary investigation and find errors by examining reports of others. Once identified, the errors have been reported to supervisors and fixed either by them or by team members, who caused it. As all the work has been transparent from the beginning, the process of fixing errors was

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impersonal and didn’t cause any personal issues between team members. Errors fixing process has been considered as shared task of keeping overall project successful.

Learnings from Analysing Leadership culture within Language Team

Analysing Leadership Culture within Language Team we have observed, that it was used to promote confidence, create trust, mutual professional respect and maintain maximum openness and transparency between team members. The environment of Collaborative and Collective Culture made every member to feel their importance and significance, it also promoted initiative and allowed to avoid conflicts. Practice Leadership allowed supervisors to educate new team members on desired behaviours from the start and to maintain dedication and motivation in long term. Based on evidence of analysed business case we can conclude that Leadership culture is successful approach to managing global team working on remote. In this chapter, we have analysed, how frameworks, such as MVP, Agile and Lean

approaches, Scrum practice, theories of Collaborative, Collective, Practice leadership, Learning culture and other concepts that have been applied at work and observed during execution of particular project – Dutch language pack development for SmartKYC application tool within Language team of SmartKYC.

Discussion and Recommendations

In this paper, we have analysed how number of emerging frameworks and theories firstly designed and mostly applied for last 15 years in software development, have been applied in company project aimed to develop Dutch language search tool as part of SmartKYC, Due Diligence and Compliance checking software. We have also analysed several leadership and team management concepts, that have been applied to manage Language developers team at SmartKYC, that have been working on remote. Analysing SmartKYC business case we seek to find added value by combining emerging software development technics with specific ways to organise and motivate team.

SmartKYC software development based on MVP, Agile and Scrum approaches is common way of development of software, Java-based applications and online platforms, which are aimed to deliver product as fast as possible, maximizing customers satisfaction at the same time. MVP is crucial phase of product development, it is first release of the product

containing minimal set of features to satisfy customers' needs and to gather feedback form them in order to understand direction of further development and potential of the market.

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Because of fast changing clients demands and technologies, the products have to be updated often, which is done in form of sprints of releases – Agile approach, emphasising flexibility, quality and customer orientation. Teams working in Scrum, sometimes compared to mini-startups, are usually small and fully equipped to complete work independently, in order to break any obstacles, decrease bureaucracy and speed up development.

In case of SmartKYC Dutch language search tool development MVP, Agile and Scrum approaches have been used as guidelines, but were adapted it for particular project. For example, the scope of MVP has been outlined, the search tool has been launched with

minimal search capabilities, but there was no crucial need to test the product at the market, as Dutch language tool have been included in set of other languages, thus have become

complimentary feature to other more developed languages. The market value can be

recognised, as some customers are interested to perform check in Dutch language, however, even if with the time the need in Dutch language will be decreased, SmartKYC platform won’t cease its work and development in other languages.

After MVP launch, middle-term map have been outlined for next releases based on topic, which are the most popular in Dutch language news, however, according to Agile approach, it’s advisable for the clients service team to get feedback on what are the Categories, that will be the most interesting for them in Dutch language, some news can also break up making one of the Categories more urgent and valuable, for example, series of scandals in Dutch news with CEOs and top-management at the same time having positions in public sector or government, can create more interest towards topics of corruption, collusion of interests, cartels, anti-competitive behaviour and suspicious illegal activities. Language development team should keep an eye on breaking news and stay flexible to change development schedule. It is also beneficial for the company to clearly outline and communicate, which features, Categories, EventTypes have been added for each release, this adds marketing value to the products, help to position it as up to date and attract new clients who might be interested specifically in new addition.

Based on comparison with development of other language search tools, it takes 9-10 month of average to write all the Rules for existing Categories and EventTypes, which is around one Category per month. It was also observed, that fully developed languages as English,

Russian, Spanish, Chinese and Arabic don’t many new EventTypes added and most of them are done on clients’ requests, thus we estimate, that there won’t be any need for major

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