scholarly journals Standard Bank: The Agile Transformation

10.28945/3923 ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 07
Author(s):  
Kevin A. Johnston ◽  
Grandon Gill
Keyword(s):  
Financial Services ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Health Indicators ◽  
Organizational Health ◽  
Turnaround Time ◽  
Systems Development ◽  
Rapid Improvement ◽  
Development Lifecycle ◽  
Waterfall Model ◽  
The Individual

South Africa’s largest bank has recently completed a transformation from traditional systems development to the scaled agile framework. The individual leading the transformation is now considering how to keep the momentum going and possible new directions. Josef Langerman, Head of IT Transformation for Standard Bank, reflected on the extraordinary transformation that his organization’s IT group had recently experienced. Over the past three years, Standard Bank’s IT group had changed from the relatively well accepted systems development lifecycle/waterfall model to a revolutionary large scale agile approach. The results had been gratifying. But it left a question unanswered. Now that things were starting to stabilize, what should be the next steps? The 154-year-old Standard Bank was the largest banking group in Africa, and the 5th largest company headquartered in South Africa. The bank offered a range of corporate, business and personal banking as well as financial services. Its 49,000 employees served over 15 million customers, in 20 countries across the continent of Africa, as well as other countries scattered around the globe. Standard Bank’s IT group, located within the company’s Johannesburg headquarters, had over 6000 employees. The group managed the bank’s technology infrastructure–including a network of nearly 10,000 ATMs, its applications development, testing, deployment, maintenance and operations. By 2014, the bank recognized that its IT performance was lagging industry benchmarks in productivity, turnaround time and employee satisfaction. Employing a “do it in-house” philosophy, it embarked on a major transformation. Abandoning traditional highly structured approaches to project management and development, it had adopted an agile philosophy that was most commonly seen in much smaller organizations and technology startups. The results had been impressive–productivity, cycle time and organizational health indicators had all risen dramatically. The group had also achieved substantial reductions in its budget. Even skeptics within the organization could not fail to be impressed. Now, however, Langerman wondered about the future. He had been cautioned by his group’s HR Culture Transformation Guide that rapid improvement could easily be followed by disillusionment. What could be done to keep the momentum going forward? Should the bank double down on the types of changes to culture, practice and training that had led to its success, or was it time to let things settle? And who should be guiding the change? Should the implementation continue entirely in-house, or should outside consultants–that were working in other areas of the bank–play a significant role? In the near future, he would need to present his recommendations to the group’s CIO.

scholarly journals Standard Bank: The Agile Transformation

10.28945/3911 ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 001-031
Keyword(s):  
Financial Services ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Health Indicators ◽  
Organizational Health ◽  
Turnaround Time ◽  
Rapid Improvement ◽  
Culture Transformation ◽  
Development Lifecycle ◽  
Management And Development ◽  
Waterfall Model

Josef Langerman, Head of IT Transformation for Standard Bank, reflected on the extraordinary transformation that his organization’s IT group had recently experienced. Over the past three years, Standard Bank’s IT group had changed from the relatively well accepted systems development lifecycle/waterfall model to a revolutionary large scale agile approach. The results had been gratifying. But it left a question unanswered. Now that things were starting to stabilize, what should be the next steps? The 154-year-old Standard Bank was the largest banking group in Africa, and the 5th largest company headquartered in South Africa. The bank offered a range of corporate, business and personal banking as well as financial services. Its 49,000 employees served over 15 million customers, in 20 countries across the continent of Africa, as well as other countries scattered around the globe. Standard Bank’s IT group, located within the company’s Johannesburg headquarters, had over 6000 employees. The group managed the bank’s technology infrastructure–including a network of nearly 10,000 ATMs, its applications development, testing, deployment, maintenance and operations. By 2014, the bank recognized that its IT performance was lagging industry benchmarks in productivity, turnaround time and employee satisfaction. Employing a “do it in-house” philosophy, it embarked on a major transformation. Abandoning traditional highly structured approaches to project management and development, it had adopted an agile philosophy that was most commonly seen in much smaller organizations and technology startups. The results had been impressive–productivity, cycle time and organizational health indicators had all risen dramatically. The group had also achieved substantial reductions in its budget. Even skeptics within the organization could not fail to be impressed. Now, however, Langerman wondered about the future. He had been cautioned by his group’s HR Culture Transformation Guide that rapid improvement could easily be followed by disillusionment. What could be done to keep the momentum going forward? Should the bank double down on the types of changes to culture, practice and training that had led to its success, or was it time to let things settle? And who should be guiding the change? Should the implementation continue entirely in-house, or should outside consultants–that were working in other areas of the bank–play a significant role? In the near future, he would need to present his recommendations to the group’s CIO.

Models, Practices and Methods of Reading: Evolution in Time and Space

2009 ◽  
pp. 59-64
Author(s):  
Yulia P. Melentyeva
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
National Program ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Lack Of Information ◽  
The Individual

In recent years as public in general and specialist have been showing big interest to the matters of reading. According to discussion and launch of the “Support and Development of Reading National Program”, many Russian libraries are organizing the large-scale events like marathons, lecture cycles, bibliographic trainings etc. which should draw attention of different social groups to reading. The individual forms of attraction to reading are used much rare. To author’s mind the main reason of such an issue has to be the lack of information about forms and methods of attraction to reading.

Team Pay Inequality: Pay Disparity in Large Teams Increases Employee Turnover by Reducing Job Control.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Jachimowicz ◽  
Christopher To ◽  
Oliver P Hauser
Keyword(s):  
Financial Services ◽  
Employee Turnover ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Job Attitudes ◽  
Organizational Outcomes ◽  
Job Control ◽  
Organizational Attribute ◽  
Pay Dispersion ◽  
Pay Inequality ◽  
Control Work

Pay dispersion is a core organizational attribute, but its’ relationship to employee turnover is relatively unclear. We propose this is the case because prior research suffers from two limitations: (1) it neglects how pay dispersion impacts employees’ psychological attitudes toward their job, and (2) it assumes that teams are homogenous, disregarding that variations in team characteristics shape how employees experience pay dispersion. The current research addresses these shortcomings by drawing on job demand-control theories to investigate how pay dispersion shapes employees’ job attitudes, and explicitly incorporates one aspect of team heterogeneity, team size variations. More specifically, our core proposition is that team pay inequality, i.e., the pay dispersion of employees within a team, reduces employees’ job control—their perceived capability to control work—particularly when teams are larger. This, in turn, makes it more likely employees in large unequal teams leave their organization. Two unique large-scale archival and survey datasets from a technology (N = 881) and financial services company (N = 22,816) provide support for our hypotheses. The current research thus offers a novel perspective on pay dispersion: salary differences within teams fundamentally shape employees’ job attitudes—particularly their job control—and thus determine important organizational outcomes.

Engineering in the time of cholera: overcoming institutional and political challenges to rebuild Zimbabwe's water and sanitation infrastructure in the aftermath of the 2008 cholera epidemic

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clarissa Brocklehurst ◽  
Murtaza Malik ◽  
Kiwe Sebunya ◽  
Peter Salama
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Rapid Improvement ◽  
Cholera Epidemic ◽  
Rapid Action ◽  
Water And Sanitation Infrastructure ◽  
Urban Rehabilitation

A devastating cholera epidemic swept Zimbabwe in 2008, causing over 90,000 cases, and leaving more than 4,000 dead. The epidemic raged predominantly in urban areas, and the cause could be traced to the slow deterioration of Zimbabwe's water and sewerage utilities during the economic and political crisis that had gripped the country since the late 1990s. Rapid improvement was needed if the country was to avoid another cholera outbreak. In this context, donors, development agencies and government departments joined forces to work in a unique partnership, and to implement a programme of swift improvements that went beyond emergency humanitarian aid but did not require the time or massive investment associated with full-scale urban rehabilitation. The interventions ranged from supply of water treatment chemicals and sewer rods to advocacy and policy advice. The authors analyse the factors that made the programme effective and the challenges that partners faced. The case of Zimbabwe offers valuable lessons for other countries transitioning from emergency to development, and particularly those that need to take rapid action to upgrade failing urban systems. It illustrates that there is a ‘middle path’ between short-term humanitarian aid delivered in urban areas and large-scale urban rehabilitation, which can provide timely and highly effective results.

Microcomputers in Political Science

1983 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Herbert F. Weisberg
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Turnaround Time ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Batch Mode ◽  
New Era ◽  
Large Scale Data ◽  
The Social ◽  
Frequency Counts

We are now entering a new era of computing in political science. The first era was marked by punched-card technology. Initially, the most sophisticated analyses possible were frequency counts and tables produced on a counter-sorter, a machine that specialized in chewing up data cards. By the early 1960s, batch processing on large mainframe computers became the predominant mode of data analysis, with turnaround time of up to a week. By the late 1960s, turnaround time was cut down to a matter of a few minutes and OSIRIS and then SPSS (and more recently SAS) were developed as general-purpose data analysis packages for the social sciences. Even today, use of these packages in batch mode remains one of the most efficient means of processing large-scale data analysis.

Flexibility Effects in a Single Link Robotic Manipulator

1993 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Nataraj
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Robotic Manipulator ◽  
Flexible Beam ◽  
Rotating Speed ◽  
Weighted Residuals ◽  
Individual Interaction ◽  
Single Link ◽  
Rigid Mass ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Future Work

Abstract A single link robotic manipulator is modeled as a rotating flexible beam with a rigid mass at the tip and accurate energy expressions are derived. The resulting partial differential equations are solved using an approximate method of weighted residuals. From the solutions, coupling between axial and flexural deformations and the interactions with rigid body motions are rigorously analyzed. The emphasis in the current paper is not on an exhaustive analysis of existing systems but it is rather intended to compare and highlight the various flexibility effects in a relatively simple system. Hence, a nondimensional parametric analysis is performed to determine the effect of several parameters (including the rotating speed) on the errors and the individual interaction effects are discussed. Comparison with previous work in the field shows important phenomena often ignored or buried in large scale numerical analyses. Future work including application to multi-link robots is outlined.

scholarly journals HUMAN ENERGY UTILIZATION AND EFFECTIVENESS IN SMALL AND MARGINAL FARM HOLDINGS

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (11) ◽  
pp. 163-171
Author(s):  
Tandra Mondal ◽  
Pranab Kumar Nag
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Energy Utilization ◽  
Hand Tools ◽  
Present Contribution ◽  
Land Preparation ◽  
Farm Work ◽  
Farm Mechanization ◽  
Power Tiller ◽  
Paddy Cultivation ◽  
The Individual

In India, small and marginal farmers have emerged as a distinct and dominant category. While farm mechanization represents a rapid transformation from traditional to modern methods of farming, it is not uniform across the crops and regions. The level of mechanization, however, remains scattered due to the compulsiveness to the situation dominated by the economic layout of farm holdings, land size, and large-scale deprivation of access to the technology suitable to small holdings. This present contribution elucidates the extent of use tools and machinery among the rice farmers of the state of Wes Bengal, India. Analysis revealed that the total number of man-days involved in paddy cultivation was 120-140 per ha, i.e., 900-1000 man-hours depending upon the availability of labour, tools, and machinery used for the individual operation. Analysis of farm work in small and marginal holdings evolved that over 90% of the total number of farmers use either tractor or power tiller for land preparation. Use of the animal-drawn country plough is gradually phased out in the study regions. For sowing and transplanting operations are primarily manual methods using hand tools. The study provided an insight of the issues of work methods and practices of the farmworkers in small and marginal farm holdings.

scholarly journals Using multilevel regression and poststratification to estimate physical activity levels from health surveys

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Christofoletti ◽  
Tânia R. B. Benedetti ◽  
Felipe Goedert Mendes ◽  
Humberto M. Carvalho
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Health Surveys ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Leisure Time Physical Activity ◽  
Health Indicators ◽  
Activity Levels ◽  
Multilevel Regression ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Single Level ◽  
Uncertainty Estimates

Background: Large-scale health surveys often consider sociodemographic characteristics and several health indicators influencing physical activity that often vary across units (regions or states). Data in a survey for some small units are often not representative of the larger population. This study developed a relatively simple multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP) model to estimate the proportion of leisure-time physical activity across Brazilian state capitals, based on the Brazilian cross-sectional national survey VIGITEL (2018). Methods: We used various approaches to evaluate whether the MRP approach outperforms single-level aggregated estimates, with various subsample proportions tested. Results: The mean absolute errors were consistently smaller for the MRP estimates than single-level regression estimates, particularly with smaller sample sizes. MRP consistently had predictions closer to the estimation target than single-level aggregated estimations. MRP presented substantially smaller uncertainty estimates compared to aggregated estimates. Conclusions: Our results confirm that MRP is a promising strategy to derive disaggregated data for health-related outcomes and, in particular, physical activity indicators from aggregated-level surveys. Overall, the MRP is superior to single-level aggregated estimates and disaggregation, yielding smaller errors and more accurate estimates. MRP significantly expands the scope of issues for which researchers can better address participation bias and interpret interactions to estimate descriptive population quantities. The observations present in this study highlight the need for further research, potentially incorporating more information in the models to better interpret interactions and types of activities across target populations.

scholarly journals Making Soup: Preparing and Validating Molecular Simulations of the Bacterial Cytoplasm

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leandro Oliveira Bortot ◽  
Zahedeh Bashardanesh ◽  
David van der Spoel
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Biological Properties ◽  
Computational Power ◽  
E Coli ◽  
Solvent Models ◽  
Explicit Solvent ◽  
Computational Modeling And Simulation ◽  
Dynamics Simulations ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Bacterial Cytoplasm

Biomolecular crowding affects the biophysical and biochemical behavior of macro- molecules when compared to the dilute environment present in experiments made with isolated proteins. Computational modeling and simulation are useful tools to study how crowding affects the structural dynamics and biological properties of macromolecules. As computational power increased, modeling and simulating large scale all-atom explicit solvent models of the prokaryote cytoplasm become possible. In this work, we build an atomistic model of the cytoplasm of Escherichia coli composed of 1.5 million atoms and submit it to a total of 3 μs of molecular dynamics simulations. The properties of biomolecules under crowding conditions are compared to those from simulations of the individual compounds under dilute conditions. The simulation model is found to be consistent with experimental data about the diffusion coefficient and stability of macromolecules under crowded conditions. In order to stimulate further work we provide a Python script and a set of files that enables other researchers to build their own E. coli cytoplasm models to address questions related to crowding.<br>

scholarly journals Nonlinear visuoauditory integration in the mouse superior colliculus

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shinya Ito ◽  
Yufei Si ◽  
Alan M. Litke ◽  
David A. Feldheim
Keyword(s):  
Superior Colliculus ◽  
Sensory Integration ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Sensory Information ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Object Identification ◽  
Response Properties ◽  
The Individual

AbstractSensory information from different modalities is processed in parallel, and then integrated in associative brain areas to improve object identification and the interpretation of sensory experiences. The Superior Colliculus (SC) is a midbrain structure that plays a critical role in integrating visual, auditory, and somatosensory input to assess saliency and promote action. Although the response properties of the individual SC neurons to visuoauditory stimuli have been characterized, little is known about the spatial and temporal dynamics of the integration at the population level. Here we recorded the response properties of SC neurons to spatially restricted visual and auditory stimuli using large-scale electrophysiology. We then created a general, population-level model that explains the spatial, temporal, and intensity requirements of stimuli needed for sensory integration. We found that the mouse SC contains topographically organized visual and auditory neurons that exhibit nonlinear multisensory integration. We show that nonlinear integration depends on properties of auditory but not visual stimuli. We also find that a heuristically derived nonlinear modulation function reveals conditions required for sensory integration that are consistent with previously proposed models of sensory integration such as spatial matching and the principle of inverse effectiveness.

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