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Complete visibility into time & dollars spent
Create meaningful reports and dashboards
Set targets and get notified of delivery risks
Track and forecast all deliverables
Create and share developer surveys
Align and track development costs
To support that, like most software organizations, we have adopted Scrum as the lifecycle management approach we use in our day to day delivery. In fact, as we noted in a previous post: How One-Week Sprints Transformed Our Engineering Workflow at Allstacks - we have actually moved to 1 week sprints to enable rapid deployment of key customer capabilities. Additionally, we have implemented quarterly planning for our software development goals.
In this planning exercise we collect information throughout the organization regarding what is needed to:
After that collection of data and initial sizing, we vote as a team on both what we will target for completion and very specifically, what we will hold aside for the time being. This gives us two obvious lists we can focus our efforts on - both the “to do now” and the “to do later”. This enables significant discipline in the execution of our plan - meaning we focus our energy to execute the stated plan without deviation - unless absolutely necessary due to an unforeseen circumstance.
This exercise “fills the gap” that can occur within Scrum if not careful. For perspective - Scrum and other Agile practices are focused on near term sprint execution and delivery. Without tie-in to the greater organizational goals, they can cause short term optimization of planning and in fact can at times undermine the companies stated macro initiatives.
Chart 1 below describes the initiatives selected for the quarter
Key Considerations:
Benefits of aligning business goals with software execution
When we successfully bridge the quarterly plan to the week to week sprints, several benefits occur. The first and perhaps most important of those is thorough organizational connectivity. Meaning that each individual contributor and team can see their contribution to organizational initiatives in every story and sprint they participate in and complete. This alignment can contribute to increasing the developer experience and overall team satisfaction with their production.
Other benefits we see:
In chart 2 below - Initial status of initiatives at beginning of quarter
In chart 3 below - Final status of initiatives at end of quarter
Using Allstacks to know you are progressing successfully:
Chart 4 below shows all of the detailed work completed in the quarter
Chart 5 below - Another view of the quarter - displaying the investment time we spent on each major initiative/epic
Allstacks enables the continual alignment of software development processes with predictable business patterns. Consistently measuring progress, organizations can unlock achievement visibility, effective communication, and collaboration. This harmonious approach fosters focus, keeps work relevant, mitigates risks associated with misaligned goals, and ensures data-driven success through continuous measurement.
If you would like to engage in further discussion about aligning your business goals with your software development and successful measurement of that alignment please reach out to us at Let's Talk Alignment!