ArcTouch designs and develops apps, websites and digital experiences for some of the world’s most influential brands, including McCormick, Hawaiian Airlines, and 3M. Using Nave, the company was able to streamline the process of building an app for a global food products company.
“Our team loves using Nave,” Francine Souza, Agile Project Manager at ArcTouch, said. “It gives us the insight and clarity we need to optimize our sprints.”
Getting Everyone on Board
In August of last year, Francine teamed up with another project manager to start tracking their team’s progress with Nave.
“I used the project as a test case for analyzing workflow metrics by looking at what the graphics and the charts are showing us,” she said.
“A few months later we checked the graphs again and we could see huge improvements in the number of issues. We managed to reduce the time tickets spent in the QA phase, and the lines on the Cumulative Flow Diagram were increasing constantly as they should.”
“After this, I started implementing a Nave session with my team. This 30-minute meeting takes place after every sprint and we look at our metrics to figure out how we can improve the next sprint.”
Nave helps Francine and her team get clarity for really important project management issues.
“At the end of each sprint, we look at charts like the Cumulative Flow Diagram to gauge the stability of our workflow. We also check the Throughput Run Chart to see how our delivery rates are stacking up. Whenever we notice a downward trend, we try to identify the source of the problem and define action points for solving it.”
The Throughput Run Chart gives you a breakdown of completed work.
iOS team board before the actions (April – July) Bugs: 28.49% Reopens: 30.17%
iOS team board after the actions (July – September) Bugs: 10.81% Reopens: 6.76%
“It’s very nice to see people get excited about this. It’s not just me who’s visualizing our progress and suggesting ideas for improvement — everyone’s chipping in with pressing questions.”
What Are Our Odds of Delivering on Time?
When the team at ArcTouch first started analyzing its performance with Nave in September of last year, they had a big release ahead of them.
“We had to deliver three major features in four months and it wasn’t clear to the team if we’d have enough time,” Francine said.
“We used a Monte Carlo simulation to get clarity.”
Monte Carlo: Delivery Date lets you forecast delivery dates based on your past performance data.
“We ended up with a 75% probability of completing the features within the client’s desired timeframe, and we felt confident with this. Had the probability percentage been lower, we would have investigated reducing the features for this release. In the end, we actually finished everything two weeks earlier than forecast.”
Where’s the Bottleneck?
At ArcTouch, Nave brings people onto the same page and helps them see, interact with, and better understand data.
“The ability to spot bottlenecks at a glance is what makes Nave such a powerful tool,” Francine said.
“When reviewing the CFD I noticed an unusually wide band in the QA stage. The developers were moving stories to QA faster, and that was overloading the QA team.”
The Cumulative Flow Diagram shows you an overview of your workflow, giving you a better understanding of your productivity. Don’t know where to look? Here’s a handy infographic.
“Once we’ve uncovered the root of the issue, we added an acceptance test cycle to our developer’s tickets and asked them to include as many technical details as possible. We wanted to minimize communication overhead during the sprint as this was slowing us down.
“These changes have reduced our ticket reopen rate by 5x,” Francine added.
Curbing the Cravings of More Than 1M Users
Francine believes that, instead of relying on intuition, it’s important to use data to support decision-making.
“Decisions based on data are more accurate than anything else. This is what will yield you the best results, in turn boosting your team morale and helping them focus on continuous improvement,” she said.
“When you’re in the trenches doing hands-on work, it’s difficult to see the big picture. Nave does a great job of visualizing your data to help you uncover important insights into your performance.”
Acting on these insights has helped Francine and her team release features faster and address user reviews received on the app stores.
“Nave is not only impacting my work and the work of my team; it’s impacting more than a million people who’ve downloaded our client’s app so far.”
