From missed deadlines to predictable outcomes

Who is ndustrial?

ndustrial helps industrial facilities around the world manage energy consumption, reduce operating costs and accelerate their digital transformation.

The challenge

The rapidly growing team was unable to track multiple software development efforts, report accurate timelines to stakeholders & started to miss significant company-wide delivery goals.

The solution

Allstacks offers holistic, actionable insights into forecasted delivery dates, provides risks and much-needed visibility for cross-departmental collaboration.

The results

ndustrial.io can make informed decisions throughout the entire dev lifecycle, saving time and money. The c-suite regained confidence in its product innovation.

Why the need? Leadership and developer challenges

Like many high-growth businesses, ndustrial.io was experiencing technical and operational growing pains in an effort to keep up with customer demands. The team tripled in size in a short period of time, rapidly scaling its software development efforts. They accumulated a large amount of technical debt from building out their initial nSight product (V1) and found it hard to balance the rework while continuing to innovate. ndustrial.io added a project management function but continued to fall short of their goals. The leadership team struggled to know the true status of critical projects at any given time, and developers had a hard time understanding how deadlines and roadmaps were being established.

Prior to Allstacks: failed attempts

As ndustrial.io embarked on a large refactor of their nSight product (V2), it became clear that they needed a solution that would drive new operational processes and help them successfully manage, track and deliver the mission-critical rebuild of their core product, nSight 2.0. Prior to engaging with Allstacks, ndustrial.io tested a number of potential solutions to solve their software estimation problem, including leveraging Jira to create several new processes and reports.

Even with the new reporting structure, the executive team was still not confident in the data and their ability to answer fundamental questions like, “Will my software ship on time?” and “Can we hit our go-to-market target date?” ndustrial.io missed their target date for the relaunch of their core product.

• Failed to solve software estimation using in-house methods & Jira
• Manual, unsatisfactory reporting
• Lack of visibility
• Sales & marketing activities on hold

Rebuilding ndustrial.io with Allstacks

After missing a critical deadline for nSight 2.0, ndustrial.io reached out to Allstacks, as they could not risk any more delays. Allstacks’ platform and customer success team allowed ndustrial.io to get the rebuild of their core product, nSight 2.0, back on track.

Predictive forecasting & reporting

Allstacks integrated with the project management and developer tools that ndustrial.io was already using—i.e. Jira, and GitHub—to gather and analyze their historical work data. Allstacks’ machine learning uses past behavior, team information, and project data to identify work patterns, find risks at the initiative level, and deliver a forecast for delivery. The team quickly identified risks around critical epics in the ndustrial.io workflow, including QA bottlenecks and low participation in code review. Using metrics like Pull Request Cycle Time, Issue Lead Time, and Epic Focus, ndustrial.io was able to continuously monitor bottlenecks and understand what parts of the nSight 2.0 initiative were consuming the most time and resources. The Allstacks’ Portfolio Report informed the executive team and company stakeholders on the progress of the rebuild, including key milestones and the delivery date for nSight 2.0.

Benefits of the new approach

ndustrial.io revamped its executive reporting structure, high-level forecasting and status tracking with the ability to drill-down into individual Jira stories or code commits. This helped bridge the needs of both the executive and development teams on establishing better delivery expectations.‍

Key results

• Save 120 hrs or $12k quarterly on reporting
• Accelerated dev velocity by 3x
• Company-wide alignment

The leadership team can confidently determine project status at any given time and focus on strategic activities that drive the business forward.

Continued success amidst crisis

In March of 2020, the world shifted as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, and companies like ndustrial.io had to quickly adapt to working remotely in order to move forward. While many others struggled to coordinate their teams and develop new ways of working, ndustrial.io already had the processes in place to stay on track. In fact, they were able to increase throughput and productivity by 14% from February to April, while other companies experienced a temporary downturn.