A large retailer struggled to meet customer needs quickly and adapt to disruptive market changes. The company realized that its existing “Waterfall” development practices hindered its ability to deliver products and solutions quickly, which negatively affected the customer experience. The company also realized the need to build a stronger partnership between IT and business units in order to develop products more effectively. The company hired Metis Strategy to help it develop cross-functional teams, train the teams on Agile development methodologies, and coach the teams to develop an Agile mindset, which focuses on rapid, iterative delivery of software to create customer-centered experiences. Metis Strategy led the Agile transformation effort for 200 employees across business and IT.
Metis Strategy’s Agile coaches worked with the company for two years to develop an Agile Transformation strategy and build cross-functional Agile product teams. To get there, Metis Strategy took the following actions:
After Agile teams had been established and trained, the client increased software throughput by 300%, improved transparency and visibility across the organization, and adopted a product-focused mindset for software delivery. Teams reduced their release cycles from multiple months to two weeks. That allowed business units to provide feedback earlier and ultimately led to higher-quality products.