THE CHALLENGE
A leading manufacturer in the residential building products space was undertaking a major transformation in how supply chain, quality, and delivery KPIs were defined, visualized, and used across its business units. Despite having strong internal teams and a clear vision, the organization lacked a phased roadmap for delivering value incrementally. Without a long-term release plan, stakeholders struggled to align expectations, prioritize work, and communicate impacts across teams. The absence of shared definitions and data integrity standards meant that reports were inconsistent and time-consuming to compile. Business leaders were referencing up to a dozen different reporting locations to run their units, and dependencies between teams were often discovered too late, causing delays and rework.
Compounding the issue was a lack of transparency in team planning. Key roles like solution architects and delivery leads were not consistently included in refinement sessions, leading to misalignment and missed opportunities to resolve technical challenges early. Stories were being pulled into sprints before they were truly ready, resulting in rushed requirements gathering and compromised sprint commitments.
The client needed a way to bring structure to their delivery process, reduce rework, and ensure that business value could be realized quickly — without sacrificing architectural integrity or data quality.
THE SOLUTION
We kicked off the engagement with a focused Inception effort, zeroing in on the manufacturer’s supply chain division. Our goal was to establish a phased delivery model that would allow teams to incrementally release KPI capabilities while maintaining architectural integrity and business alignment.
We mapped out twelve delivery phases across product lines, each tied to specific KPI categories—delivery, quality, and engagement. These phases were sequenced to prioritize shared data sources and high-impact metrics first, enabling faster realization of value.
To support this, we introduced a refined definition of ready, coached teams on story refinement 2–3 sprints ahead and implemented modeling reviews to reduce design rework. We also helped define data domains to prevent duplication across business units and established a release plan that made the impact of out-of-scope work visible to stakeholders.
We worked closely with product owners to ensure that refinement sessions included the right voices. This alignment helped teams avoid last-minute surprises and allowed for better decomposition of epics into features and stories. By introducing a lightweight feature layer between epics and stories, we gave teams the clarity they needed to plan effectively and deliver consistently.
The Inception also included coaching on backlog prioritization and sprint planning. We helped teams map stories to future sprints using high-level estimates, giving stakeholders a clearer view of what was coming and when. This visibility allowed for earlier identification of dependencies and better coordination across teams.
THE RESULTS
The phased approach will allow the manufacturer to begin delivering KPI capabilities within weeks, not months and laid the foundation for a multi-year transformation—one that will deliver measurable improvements in operational efficiency, data quality, and decision-making.
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