ART Brings "One-Program" Concept to Life

This week marked a significant milestone for us at Springbach as we collaborated with our client to roll out a major update to their application—an essential tool used by 19,000 users! This update aimed to enhance the user experience and bring more beloved products to the shelves. While the transition will appear seamless to users, achieving this feat required meticulous coordination and teamwork behind the scenes, and our Springbachers were up to the challenge.

• Aligning Teams to a Set of Common Features

  To start, the Release Train Engineer (RTE) and Agile Release Train (ART) Coach, our own Mark Eldred, were able to align nine teams (consisting of Legacy teams, new functionality teams, analytics teams, and integrations teams) toward a common set of high-value features defined by the business in PI Planning. These features were focused on bringing ordering functionality into the mobile app, allowing us to retire an older, standalone application. This new functionality pushed teams outside of their comfort zone and forced them to work as one through daily collaboration. This daily collaboration included Coach Syncs, PO Syncs, ART syncs, and daily meetings to discuss blockers where each team would have representation. If something needed to be taken care of or changed, there was always a venue to discuss what needed to happen and make those changes a reality.

• Under-committing to Allow for Work to Complete

  Amidst the energy of a major update, Richard Gunther, the Springbach Scrum Master overseeing the Integrations team demonstrated great foresight by advocating for under-committing. Oxymoronic? Maybe. But smart? Absolutely! It gave the team bandwidth to not only confidently meet their goals at a time when a lot was riding on meeting commitments, but also to help other teams complete their work to get the update across the finish line. Under-committing is always helpful when teams are having trouble completing their commitments each sprint - it allows them to look at their metrics and make realistic goals based on what they can deliver.

• Pulling Work Forward

  Meanwhile, the Springbach Scrum Master working closely with the Analytics team, Mikaila Bisson, focused on reducing cycle time and pulling refined work from upcoming sprints into the current sprint as other work was completed. This allowed the team to complete planned work for the update first and then discuss priorities of what to pull in/complete next. The current update was top of mind for what work to bring in, but future updates also played a part in their pull-forward strategy. Why not get a head start on what is coming down the line?

• Fortifying Capacity Up-Front

  Finally, in a strategic move towards ensuring a seamless customer experience, Mike Achilles, the Springbach Scrum Master leading the team tasked with developing new functionality for Ordering took proactive measures to fortify their team's capacity. They did this by ensuring there was room in their sprint for any bugs or defects found as work progressed, supporting quality throughout and leaving room for customer feedback.

All this teamwork throughout the program will help thousands of people do their jobs every day. As we reflected on the collective achievements we contributed to the program, it was evident that we not only enhanced the productivity of this program but also positively influenced countless lives. That is why we do what we do - to change the way you work so you can change the way you live!

Do you want get your teams to come together in pursuit of a major goal like this and deliver on time? Call us, we can help.