Get started

Agile software delivery methodologies guide payment processor to successful first value increment

One of the world's leading payment processing enterprises found that its software projects were stalling out. They hired Sketch's software consultants to help them deliver value faster.

case study setup
Situation

Unproductive software development efforts

The world’s most used online payment processing vendor was struggling to manage credit and risk on their broad platform. The vendor needed strong risk analysis tools and an analytics dashboard to answer risk-related questions for both merchants and consumers

Challenge

Software delivery process improvement

case study challenge

A group of high-performing engineers and business analysts formed a product platform team to kick off this new initiative.

With funding in place and an experienced platform engineer at the helm, the team started developing features for technical capabilities that would comprise the new intelligence automation platform.

It quickly became evident that this team's mission to build an intelligence platform wasn't necessarily aligned with solving a customer problem.

background scribble 3

Stakeholder alignment

They were missing a critical part of the picture: the voice of the customer. What did a credit risk analyst need in order to make risk trade-off decisions?

Enter Sketch

Solution

Team composition and roadmap planning

The customer engaged Sketch to guide the new team. Together, we agreed that the primary objective for this phase of the engagement was to plan the first value increment successfully. Additionally, we determined that this team should adopt proven agile software development practices, which were new to the team. Sketch leveraged our value framework that outlined core elements for team success.

case study solution

Purpose-driven development

First, create alignment around a common purpose and publish a product vision. This grounded the team while driving direction and decision making. The team needed visible goals to ensure they were always working on the right things at the right time for the right reason.

Backlog creation

Over multiple working sessions, we co-developed a high-level roadmap and the beginnings of a leadership backlog. This leadership backlog gave delivery and enablement teams a clear escalation path to mitigate risks, dependencies, and impediments quickly. With the vision, goals, and mitigation plans established, it was time to rethink the team's structure.

Cross-functional teams

Specifically, the client needed to transition from a team structure focused on building an intelligence platform to one organized by customer value.
The unit became six cross-functional, value-aligned delivery teams. This structure supported the requirement of quickly responding to changing business priorities. 
case study results
Results

Agile software development and CI/CD practices

Iterative development

One of the goals of this effort was to iteratively and incrementally build a secure, reliable, and
responsive data platform. Technical excellence wasn't enough, though—the platform had to address end-user needs.

CLIENT FEEDBACK

“Working with Sketch has made all the difference for our team in terms of standing up a scaled agile structure that we can grow from. Our Coach’s positive energy, teacher/coach style and relatability made it not only educational, but fun to engage and learn from his lessons and tools provided to our team. We are excited to be in our first sprint of PI, and to have gotten through the first planning event successfully. Thank you, Sketch, for an amazing engagement!”

Director, intelligence automation

Payment processing enterprise

Looking for something similar?

If you're interested in delivering software faster, we're happy to talk about a custom consulting engagement that fits your exact needs. The first few hours of consultation are always free.
Schedule an introductory call