The old adage goes, “You should do what you preach.” Its sound advice, and we follow it when it comes to our engineering insights product Plural sight Flow. In light of the fact that we advertise the fact that Flow is intended to optimise your software delivery, it seems to reason that our engineers would utilise it to optimise their own software delivery as well. Yes, we are optimisation.
One of our engineering teams recently delivered a presentation inside the company to offer guidance to other teams on how to use Flow to decrease cycle time and increase overall efficiency, velocity, and team health. You’ll get insight into how team leaders leverage Flow on a weekly and daily basis to strengthen communication with their teams, and how team members leverage it to enhance the software development process as a whole.
How do Plural sight’s developer team leads use Flow?
During the first meeting of the week, Surya Remedy, Plural sight’s Senior Manager of Engineering, reviews the previous week’s Ticket Log with the company’s product managers. Leaders and PMs Work to establish a shared comprehension of the team’s activities, progress on projects, and potential outcomes for the week. The team examines the tasks that have not yet begun, those that are queued up, etc. They can monitor how their team is doing in the current sprint and who is working on what tickets at any given time by filtering the reports.
These heads of state may observe which tickets are being held week to week by looking at this data as soon as the workweek begins. When tickets remain in a certain state for an extended period of time, they can communicate with the developer to identify and remove roadblocks.
They also utilise Ticket Log to drive their stand-up meetings by sending out a reminder five minutes beforehand in Slack with a link to the report’s current sprint view, so that everyone can prepare to discuss their tickets. Team members and supervisors can talk more freely about any unanticipated tasks. Leaders may develop improved team culture by asking questions based on the data, but the numbers alone won’t do the trick.
How do Plural sight teams use Flow?
To assess the group’s progress over time, they first look at the Retrospective report. To determine how rapidly items processed through the queue, they compare the current quarter to the preceding six quarters and examine data points such as the median queue time. About 118 hours passed while things waited in line a year ago. This process now takes a day or less to finish.
This goal reached through the team’s discussions at the end of each sprint’s retrospective meeting. In order to determine the root of the delays, they would consult the Retrospective and Sprint Movement reports (e.g., team member on boarding or ups killing).
They found that having too many active tickets led to longer than desired wait and service times. Through analysis of the Flow data associated with Median Queue Time, they determined that tickets waiting for review or action by other teams were causing a significant portion of their queue-time concerns.
Retrospective and Sprint Movement reports
The team’s metrics improved and stabilised thanks to the processes they put in place after reviewing the Retrospective and Sprint Movement reports at each and every sprint retro. Now that their systems are stable, they can concentrate on fixing the few problems that exist outside the norm. They are able to investigate and address the root cause of any unexpected increases in cycle or queue time immediately.
The team leads of Plural sight Flow suggest that businesses which make use of Flow conduct a value stream mapping to learn about the processes involved in bringing a piece of code to fruition. By doing so, you can anticipate when items may place in different queues or require additional validation. The information in the Flow reports will make greater sense to you, allowing you to work together more effectively.
The Plural sight team used Flow and realised how interconnected every step of the software development process is. Improved channels of communication both within and across teams allow for shorter cycle and queue times, leading to greater velocity. When using Flow on a regular basis, you’ll find that some indicators more intertwined than others; yet, in the grand scheme of things, everything interconnected. Accelerating the release of goods and features, closing more tickets, and enhancing the well-being of the development team will all result.
