Embla Software Innovation (Pvt) Ltd, the award-winning, delivery-focused software services outsourcing company received the silver award, becoming the category winners for “Agile Operations” at the FITIS Digital Excellence Awards 2021, held in Shangri-La Colombo. 

The award was presented for Embla’s promising agile transformation, fulfilling the criteria of embracing small, self-organized teams to realize customer value through the exemplary application of agile processes and mindset to their business and culture. 

Initiated in 2009, Embla Software Innovation (Pvt) Ltd. embarked upon an integrated and agile transformation to enable Embla’s success and ensure future sustainability in this hyper-competitive, ever-changing business environment. 

There are numerous paths to agility, but the journey to becoming agile can be very challenging; especially in the Asian software industry. 

Embla recognized the transformational benefits of moving to an agile operating model at an early stage and adopted the four concepts of agile manifesto; three laws of agile, scrum values, and the heart of agile concepts to its software development practices. 

But when closely monitored, the challenges started to alleviate - such as cultural and hierarchical barriers, resistance to change, not meeting customer expectations, miscommunications, and team maturity. As a software development services provider to the Scandinavian market, where the majority of its partners are independent software vendors in Norway, Embla understood the importance of giving priority to cultural aspects as well the technical aspects. 

After thorough research and study, in early 2018, with the aim of ensuring value creation for Embla’s partners and to achieve customer expectations, Embla introduced a process framework called ‘Embla Extended Agile Framework’ (EEA) to all the development teams with the ultimate goal of serving their customers better; and branded this process transformation as the ‘Journey to Service Excellence’. 

This framework helped Embla to collaborate with foreign clients and align with the cultural aspects, as well as to ensure awareness and active interaction between the team and the product owner.