DESIGN & STRATEGY CONSULTANCY - 2023
Build an internal Agile project planning, forecasting & cost tracking Platform
Context
As a Product Delivery Manager in a Design and Consultancy Agency, I worked for 6 months on a new internal project delivery platform with the purpose to increase the studio efficiency and income.
What is it?
⚠️ This product is still confidential
It is an internal platform designed to solve many problems that Agile businesses have when trying to measure
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Project delivery accuracy
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Cost/time tracking
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Forecasting & systemisation
It combines the efficiency of Agile with the structure of Waterfall to provide greater future, present and past delivery metrics, like no other existing solutions & platforms do.
How does it work?
The ongoing version of this product is a smart combination of multiple software (Jira, Confluence, HubSpot, Tempo..) all working together in a unique way to deliver great product delivery efficiency & and data-driven decisions.
I have then designed a stand-alone software that provides these features in a more accessible way.
6mth
Project
+15%
Deliv. Efficiency
+22%
Employee Satisf.
8K£
Cost saved/4mth
8.2/10
End usab. score
Process
Problem
Consultancies working on multiple projects at the same time, with multiple businesses have multiple requirements that no current tasks/KPI platform solves:
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How to efficiently measure the team project delivery efficiency?
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How to know when the team can take over another project?
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How to deliver both AGILE & Waterfall pieces of work within the same task management structure?
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How to adapt to each company & product team WOW?
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How to know if the project budget is on track, and where the team over-spent their time?
Hypothesis
My hypothesis was that using the AGILE 2W sprints as a bucket of work that can be used for both Agile content and waterfall content could be the key to making this hybrid way of working work.
It means that each month & year is divided into 2w sprints, that can be filled with either waterfall work-packages, or agile-based product design tasks. That would allow us to plan both Waterfall & Agile work the same way, and gather cost, time & tracking data no matter what type of work the team is delivering.
Solution
The platform solution I created provided these features:
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Plan upcoming client project workload
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Get upcoming workforce availability (in hours)
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Follow 2W sprint planning & AGILE rituals
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Ability to deliver Agile content or Waterfall content within the existing system
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Gather live cost project data based on the time logged by the team
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Gather past sprint project efficiency and analyses to take actions
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Get quarterly & yearly views of the time/cost spent delivering work-packages
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Plug&Play set work packages that contain estimated delivery time & estimated workload to easily plan&assign workload
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Get an automated estimation of the real cost of delivery
Validation
I tested multiple iterations of this new Platform, and gathered employee & client feedback on the new WOW implemented within the business, as well as measured KPI to define success. The overall satisfaction grew higher with the end product, allowing better project performance at multiple levels:
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Day-to-day tasks for Designers were clearer than before, with a clear end target for their workload (2W duration to do the work), it made employee satisfaction go up by 22%
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Planning accuracy allowed us to provide better quotes to client, and ensure no work was poorly planned. Delivery efficiency went up by 15%
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Designers & Researchers extra-unplanned hours dropped by 50% throughout the installation of the process
