Jim Deane Leads Agile IT Operation At Start-up Imagination Life

Jim Deane cofounded Cape Town-based Imagination Life and then helped mold its technology operation into an agile strategy and process innovator.

Agile and Scrum

Deane has organized Imagination Life's development process around the Scrum concept, a particular brand of the Agile project management technique that borrows its name from the sport of Rugby and extols the virtues of speed and small, interdepartmental teams. "To us, Agile means the ability to have a short development cycle that enables requirements to be identified, prioritized and deployed on a three-week cycle," he says.

To stay on that path, Deane makes sure the IT team adheres to a rigorous IT governance process. "We allow new requirements to be freely added to our backlog of items and strictly police these into our prioritized potential development queue in a process that reviews and recommends items on a three-week basis," he explains.

When it comes to production, Imagination Life's IT environment relies heavily on Microsoft (Redmond, Wash.) solutions. "We have built all our systems using Microsoft tools in a service-oriented architecture using Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, Windows Workflow Foundation, SharePoint and a number of other key technologies," Deane details.

The company also employs an incremental development process, which has helped it grow since its launch in 2004 and adapt to the changing demands of its customers. In essence, Deane says, the company has only one IT project: "What I mean is that we are only building one system -- the administration system that underpins our entire business," he explains.

"The incremental process is key because we needed to start with limited functionality to enable us to start the business with a limited product set and functionality to drive them," Deane continues. "We have incrementally built functionality and product support as needed in line with the business requirement."

It's an approach that Deane says is key to meeting Imagination Life's biggest marketplace challenge -- providing the most needy with appropriate insurance products. "Our mission is to serve the poorer people with appropriate value for money products that actually serve their needs," he comments.

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