Case Story: Healthfirst

Prior to the pandemic, Healthfirst was already exploring the adoption of DevOps principles to enhance its products and services. The pandemic's onset intensified the need for rapid change, compelling the company to expedite the development and delivery of a new mobile app. This acceleration was facilitated by the fact that the mobile app was a new product, unencumbered by the legacy systems that characterized Healthfirst's other 150 applications. The mobile app was designed for incremental change and integrated automated testing, enabling continuous delivery with releases every three weeks. In contrast, the company's other applications, constrained by multiple dependencies, followed a monthly release calendar to mitigate release risk.

Healthfirst's adoption of agile practices was uneven across teams, with varying levels of maturity. Plutora's solutions provided insights into areas where teams were not consistently adhering to Healthfirst's organizational processes, supporting continuous improvement.

The pandemic-induced shift to remote work presented additional challenges, disrupting traditional communication and requiring new ways to maintain visibility and coordination. Plutora's tools enabled Healthfirst's teams to collaborate effectively and maintain a single source of truth during this transition.

To coordinate cross-team releases, Healthfirst adopted the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), utilizing Program Increment (PI) Planning and Agile Release Trains (ARTs). Plutora's Release Orchestration acted as a "traffic cop," aiding teams in managing release scope and improving release health. Plutora facilitated the integration of various tools within Healthfirst's DevOps toolchain, including VersionOne, HP ALM, and ServiceNow, providing visibility into the flow of work across these systems.

Plutora's solutions also addressed the issue of scope creep, which had previously caused delays and increased risk. By integrating with ServiceNow's scope lock feature, Plutora prevented unauthorized changes and alerted release managers to potential impacts. Plutora also enabled the collection of data on release testing window extensions, providing insights into team challenges and opportunities for improvement.

Furthermore, Plutora enhanced the release team's ability to inspect the end-to-end SAFe process, identify potential problems early, and improve behaviors around the Definition of Done. It also provided a consolidated view of change records in ServiceNow, improving release status visibility.

Looking ahead, Healthfirst aims to implement CICD pipelines across all value streams and automate deployments. Plutora will play a key role in coordinating these automated deployments and integrating governance into the CICD pipeline. Healthfirst envisions a future state where they have comprehensive visibility into the flow of work across each value stream, enabling continuous optimization while balancing speed and risk.

Value stream management has been instrumental in helping Healthfirst navigate the challenges of digital transformation, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. By improving visibility, collaboration, and automation, Plutora has enabled Healthfirst to enhance its release processes, reduce risk, and deliver value more effectively to its customers.