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The Vanguard Group

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The Vanguard Group, headquartered in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, was founded in 1975 by John C. Bogle and has grown to become one of the largest investments companies in the world. As of June 30, 2016, the company has more than $3.5 trillion in global assets, with more than 20 million investors served by 14,000 employees, known as crew members. (Fast facts about Vanguard). Vanguard leverages its technology to support various types of investors through websites and apps for personal investors and web portals for its institutional investors, along with a modern phone center and operational area. One of the reasons that Vanguard has been able to be able to grow to this size, without greatly increasing the number of employees in recent years …show more content…

By definition, the project is supposed to develop and deliver something that can be reviewed by the business during each sprint, although in Vanguard’s practice this rarely happens because of the complexity of the systems involved. Prior to the start of a given sprint, a subset of the team, which includes the business project manager, known as the Product Owner, Scrum Master, BSA and Tech Lead will meet to define the goals for the sprint at a high level. Then the entire team will meet to create individual tasks, known as stories, that are assigned to various team members. These stories are generally written in business terms in phrases like, “As the end user, I want something to happen.” After planning is complete and agreed upon, the sprint is committed. For the duration of the sprint, the team will work together to complete the stories that were defined for the sprint. The team will meet on a daily basis, in a “Scrum meeting,” at which each team member will briefly describe what he/she accomplished the day before, what he/she plans to accomplish that day and state any impediments that he/she has, so that they can be resolved. The team will also have “Decomp meetings,” where the IT team will meet the business to decompose the stories and break down what is needed so that the software can be developed. The goal of the decomp meeting is to make sure the entire team knows what the business needs and what will be developed. At the …show more content…

As stated above, one of the reasons that Vanguard has been able to grow so large and keep its fees low is because of its use of technology. Vanguard has always had a mix of IT professional who were Vanguard employees and outside contractors, but about three years ago, Vanguard started operate with a hybrid offshore outsourcing model. While a majority of the IT professionals are still crew members, a significant amount of the development teams are now outsourced to an offshore company. Most the outsourced professionals are based in India, but some of them are doing their work in the U.S., comingled with the Vanguard

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