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Nonprofit increases software delivery speed by 400%

Sometimes the benefits of consulting are hard to quantify, at least until you give the new way of working a while to produce results. That wasn't the case here, as a nonprofit achieved measurable improvements almost immediately by adopting agile software delivery methodologies.

case study setup
Situation

Software development process improvement for a nonprofit

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. 

Challenge

Lack of internal resources

case study challenge

The team was relying heavily on their Director and Lead Engineer to facilitate Scrum practices which included: planning, refinement, stand ups, etc.

Difficulty balancing workloads

Increasing internal bandwidth

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 also improve the team’s ways of working so they could start delivering what they were committing to deliver. 
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In other words, this client needed to stop missing deadlines and start delivering working software.

Enter Sketch

Solution

Value stream mapping and scrum training

case study solution

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.

Story mapping

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.

Better software development practices

We also worked on Development/Testing to help the team develop more quickly, and established a “Team Working Agreement” with best practices.
Finally, we 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.
case study results
Results

Accelerated software delivery pipeline

Measurable improvements

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.

CLIENT FEEDBACK

“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.”

Want to build software faster?

If you're interested in increasing your speed to market, we're happy to tell you how we did this in greater detail. The first few hours of consulting are always free.
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