Modernizing software delivery at Ally Financial

In an effort to stay competitive in the market, Ally Financial, the largest all-digital FDIC-insured bank in the United States, embarked on a modernization plan to improve its software release process. The company's Director of Digital Engineering Operations and Director Lead of Software Engineering worked with LaunchDarkly to build faster and safer releases. Ally's transformation began about 15 years ago when it transitioned from traditional banking services to digital, resulting in the organization it is today. With over 11 million customers and nearly $200 billion in assets, Ally is a powerhouse in fintech. To balance speed and safety, Ally modernized its applications, introduced feature-level rollbacks, implemented testing in production, and achieved parity between web and mobile platforms. The company collaborated with LaunchDarkly to implement feature flagging capabilities, decoupling the UI from the API and introducing a more modular architecture. With these changes, Ally reduced overnight and weekend releases by 97% while increasing production deployments by 300%. The team developed guiding principles for release management, emphasizing autonomy, automation, and continuous improvement. Ally's success with LaunchDarkly has sparked interest across the organization, and the company plans to continue improving its software delivery process and work-life balance of engineering teams.