Melinda’s ensuring our Agile evolution

A Product Manager in our London office, Melinda is working at the heart of a large-scale agile transformation taking place at Deutsche Bank. Alongside her team, she ensures that projects which directly impact our business value are delivered both efficiently and effectively and keeps us on track as we continue to evolve our business.

Through Agile working practices, Deutsche Bank is changing. By operating in a more proactive way, we are building more quality into our products, creating stronger partnerships that stretch across our business, inspiring our people to be more innovative than ever, and creating greater results for our clients.

Melinda plays a critical role in helping her department use the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFE) that is underpinning our transformation. Whether she is acting as her team’s Subject Matter Expert (SME) and dealing with ad-hoc requests, or bridging gaps with business stakeholders, she guides them through individual Programme Increments (PI) to ensure they deliver on their goals every 10 weeks. For her, “The move to using Agile principles has had the greatest impact on work. It has created a partnership between the business and technology and ensured greater transparency on our deliverables, helping us to deliver increased business value”.

The world continues to change, and businesses are having to adapt their ways of working faster than ever before. Melinda’s skills and experience are helping that happen right here at Deutsche Bank. As someone who works on projects driven by regulatory timelines, with a direct impact on capital, she understands the value of implementing new technology and strategic systems that can help us to act in a timelier manner and bidding farewell to legacy applications. To her, championing change is the key to building a better Deutsche Bank. “As an organization, we should always address areas of culture that are not beneficial and embrace new learning to ensure that our people and our clients remain at the centre of what we do”.

Much like the Agile practices that are transforming the way in which we work, our culture is ever evolving. For Melinda, Deutsche Bank is a place where she can be at the “cutting edge of technology and engineering, and partner with clients like Google” but still feel supported, invested in and valued. “Deutsche Bank place real emphasis on empowering people. From mental health to work-life balance, we’re taught to always consider how we, as an organization, can give back.” In her department, and across the wider business, that means cultivating a culture where everyone can try, fail, adapt and excel. It’s how we inspire our people to adapt to uncertain times, embrace what’s next and reaffirm the values and beliefs that built Deutsche Bank.

Deutsche Bank is a place for people to “write their own story of success”. As we continue to transform, we discover new opportunities for our business and the people behind it. For Melinda, that means balance, and prioritizing the people at the heart of our business so we can continue to deliver greater business value. Our transformation represents not only a chance to further enable our client centric mindset but to become an organization that can give more back. It’s why Melinda is so excited about what’s to come and wants more architects of their own story to join us on our journey. “Deutsche Bank aren’t simply committed to investing in leading technology; they’re committed to investing in their biggest asset, their people.”