We were thrilled recently to hear of the success of one of our Eagles – a local London graduate on placement as an intern at ING. Each year, since 2014, ING hosts the Empowerment Awards, to celebrate the many initiatives that empower the company to stay a step ahead. The internal engagement category is about showcasing ideas that make employees proud to work for ING and which help the bank to move forward. It was one of five different awards being presented at the most recent ceremony:
Last week, our very own UK IT SUMMIT team walked away with the internal engagement prize at this year’s ING Empowerment Awards.
It’s more than just a game…
Danushan Kumanan, an Eagles intern in the SUMMIT* team at the time, created a game (also called Summit) that was intrinsically tied to the group’s projects, online tools, and to the agile way of working.
For every ‘sprint’ (major section of a larger project) that the group worked on, teams could earn virtual coins to buy prizes like coffees or doughnuts or choose to buy virtual weapons to defend against ‘pirate attacks’. Special items and power-ups also became available as teams reached milestones.
There were no additional tasks for them to worry about either, as they were simply required to make sure the status of their sprints were recorded in their usual tools and game results are automatically available online on the game platform.
What has changed as a result of playing the game?
“Substantially less time is now being wasted on solving ‘obstacles’ or ‘blockers’ in sprints as they are now brought to the teams’ attention as soon as they occur…” says Dave de Jong, Global Manager for Summit.
“…most importantly team morale has improved as people are really enjoying the competitive element. The next focus of the game is to increase more demonstrations of software during sprints to improve understanding across teams”
Congratulations to Danu and everyone in the SUMMIT team! Great effort.
*The SUMMIT team which is part of Financial Markets consists of three global DevOps scrum teams, spread over five trade floor locations. It provides 24/7 support to all Financial Markets stakeholders.
