The Power of ‘Unbounded’ IT
Many forwardthinking CIOs have begun the journey toward an ‘unbounded’ technology organization for greater speed, agility, efficiency, and innovation.
As IT’s mission has expanded over the years into the realms of innovation and business strategy, many CIOs have begun to rethink the way their technology organizations operate. They are placing heavier emphasis on collaboration with business and external partners, for example, and on finding new ways for development teams to work smarter and more efficiently to deliver products and services.
Traditionally, IT organizations were often structured around functional silos; their operating models emphasized service catalogs, service levels, and delivery commitments. Today’s increasingly “unbounded” technology organizations, on the other hand, offer the potential for new speed and agility by embracing concepts such as DevOps and shared services as well as technologies such as cloud and automation. It’s the next step in IT’s ongoing transformation, and for many companies, the rewards are significant.
Banking on a Digital Future
When digital innovation began to disrupt the banking sector, Capital One Financial Corp. soon recognized that it needed to reimagine its IT organizational model, development approaches, and delivery processes. The company kicked off its transformation in 2010 by rebranding the tech organization with a new name: Capital One Technology. “This was more than a name change,” says CIO Rob Alexander. “It was a declaration that we would no longer be a traditional bank IT shop. From that day on, we would be an organization working to transform Capital One into a technology company.”
To that end, Alexander and leaders from across the bank’s lines of business developed a road map that included an operational IT transformation structured around the following principles:
Agility. Developers use Agile methodologies to build customerfacing digital experiences, evolve products and services, and enable solutions for reinventing how employees work.
Alignment. Agile teams are assigned to business executives and dedicated to supporting their products, services, and broader business strategies.
DevOps. Operational team members now work further upstream in the software develop- ment life cycle to enable closer collaboration with developers, while new investments in tools and processes enable automation of software delivery.
Reuse. The bank standardized on RESTful APIs, a microservices architecture, and containerization in the cloud.
Open source.
Capital One takes advantage of open resources to expedite development and encourages its engineers to contribute back to open-source projects. Contributions from people across the organization now help extend and improve core services.
Cloud. The bank has adopted a cloud-first mindset and forged strategic relationships with leading cloud vendors.
Human-centered Ecosystem. design.
Capital One views great design as central to every development project. In 2014, it acquired Adaptive Path, a design and user experience consultancy.
Capital One has industrialized its sensing, scanning, and incubation function through engagement with startups, venture capital firms, and academic institutions. An active acquisition strategy aims to add talent and differentiated technol- ogy to the bank’s arsenal.
Education. The bank has established a learning organization to help employees increase their understanding of existing and emerging technologies.
Since Capital One’s IT transformation journey began seven years ago, many of its original operational and development goals have been surpassed. “We are a fundamentally different organism today,” Alexander says. “We build our own products and release them on a regular basis. We have hundreds of applications in the cloud and are creating innovative products for the marketplace. We are a much larger and more capable operation.”
The journey is far from over, however. Recognizing that banking services will likely be integrated ever more closely into people’s lives, Capital One Technology is now working to develop a branded yet personal customer experience. “We start with the way customers want to interact with their banks and work backward from there,” Alexander says. “By designing and delivering experiences that exceed customer expectations, we will be defining the digital bank of the future.”