A small social platform organization with just one software team hired Sketch to implement a true end-to-end system process that would cover all aspects of the organization. Everyone, from the top down, was eager for the changes, especially speed-to-market for new features. With everyone willing to learn, anticipating changes to their approach, and exhibiting little to no resistance, it was time to get started.
The team was relying heavily on their Director and Lead Engineer to facilitate Scrum practices which included: planning, refinement, stand ups, etc. With their plates already full with their primary role responsibilities, they really needed someone to come in and not only help with these basic practices but improve the team’s ways of working so they could start delivering what they were committing to deliver.
Sketch provided a delivery coach to partner with the client’s team. An initial Value Stream Mapping session enabled Sketch to get a clear picture of the current process, issues, and potential improvements.
Following this, we conducted numerous Story Mapping sessions which enabled us to break big Features into smaller Epics that were valuable but could be delivered quickly. This was key in enabling us to quickly deliver the “core value” for several OKR Features.
We also worked on Development/Testing to help the team develop quicker and established a “Team Working Agreement” with best practices. We also helped them to plan and implement a new end-to-end approach where we focused primarily on the “why” for the approach that had been identified up-front.
As the engagement was coming to a close, we facilitated a new Value Stream Mapping session which was a great opportunity to review, discuss, and document the improvements that had been made by the team. The fact that these issues had been identified up-front and then were clearly resolved after two months gave the engagement a clear sense of purpose and accomplishment. It was rewarding to observe the team begin to meet their OKR deadlines for several big features very quickly, by just delivering one or two sub-features (MVP’s) from each of them.
This client is already well on its way with a new approach to continuous improvement:
"We were able to make a large impact more quickly than expected. The Value Stream Mapping sessions at the beginning and end of the engagement made it perfectly clear and visible that there had already been significant measurable improvements because of the major issues this team resolved in only two months.”
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