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Internal Data Group Aligns Behind Delivery Outcomes

case study setup

The Setup

After recently consolidating 3 different data teams under a single organization, the client came to Sketch for help adopting productive practices for these teams. They wanted Sketch to help build the operational model, as well as help determine individual skills and delivery practices necessary to become a product-driven organization. At the start, we identified Speed to Market, Predictability and Alignment as the most important outcomes to focus on improving.
case study challenge

The Challenge

Before we got started, the client had shared many challenges they were facing:

  • Stakeholders didn’t know where their requests were in the queue, or when to expect them to be completed.
  • Coordinating priorities for large efforts (and even small ones) was difficult and prone to misalignment across individuals and teams.
  • Teams were focused on fulfilling requests and had difficulty creating time and space to improve the client’s product offerings.
  • Teams couldn’t deliver work independently, so members spent too much time in standups for coordination and visibility needs.
  • Leaders weren't sure how to apply agile practices to a data organization.
case study challenge

The Challenge

Our approach was broken into phases:

  1. Team structure
  2. Core team practices
  3. Cross-team planning
  4. Continued growth practices

Working in phases helped the organization incrementally develop the skills needed to enable more advanced practices. The process felt less intimidating, even as the team completed all of the following steps toward their identified objectives:

  • Agile bootcamps (training sessions)
  • Team coaching for ceremonies
  • 1-on-1 coaching sessions
  • Facilitated workshops and working sessions
  • Contract Scrum Masters from Sketch who filled the role on the teams
  • Coaching for the leadership team
  • Tool configuration (ADO) to establish consistent patterns for tracking and managing work
  • Squad health checks using proprietary software to take a baseline and measure progress
case study results

The Results

Working on challenges one at a time reduced the complexity of this team's struggles. By naming and addressing simple issues, the client achieved all of the following:

  • Cross-functional teams aligned to related business streams
  • Improved visibility into the work they were doing, and improved stakeholder communication
  • Frequent deliveries that consistently deliver on stakeholder objectives
  • Accurate commitments for time spans and efforts larger than one or two sprints, which allows stakeholders to confidently build plans based around their delivery
  • A Product Owner Guild, which is among the most effective guilds we have seen in any organization, in which members bring individual challenges to the group, exchange feedback. and collaborate on solutions
  • A level of transparency and candor that helped employees stay more engaged

Client Feedback

"The stakeholders are very optimistic about the strategy we have developed with Sketch, and they are anxious to see it come to life.”

– VP, Data Science

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