Maximum Velocity
Empowering Product Teams to Build Faster, Iterate Smarter, and Deliver Impact
Client
The Home Depot
Year
2022
My Role
Product Manager
Services
Strategy & Design
Intro
As the Axen team at Home Depot took on more initiatives and expanded the engineering team, Agile workflows became a bottleneck. The team faced slow development cycles, a bloated backlog, and inefficiencies that hindered feature releases and productivity.
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The Problem
The engineering team struggled with:
Slow development cycles, causing delays in feature releases and impacting business teams reliant on analytics tools.
Chaos due to manual work allocation: Tasks and assignments were distributed without a clear tracking system, leading to engineers experiencing extended periods without work while others were overwhelmed.
Lack of visibility: There was no effective way to track availability or progress, causing subtasks like code reviews and testing to fall through the cracks.
Blockers and dependencies were not properly managed or tracked, often forgotten until deadlines loomed, which led to last-minute scrambling and delays.
Solution
I led an Agile process optimization initiative, working closely with Engineering, Product, and Analytics teams to streamline workflows.
Key actions included:
✅ Optimizing Agile workflows by creating personalized dashboards based on cross-functional roles and Agile methodologies.
✅ Automating key engineering tasks, such as manual testing and deployments, to reduce manual effort and improve efficiency.
✅ Implementing clear KPIs to track development velocity, lead time, cycle time, and bug resolution rates, helping teams measure progress more effectively.
✅ Addressing bottlenecks in sprint execution, backlog management, and cross-team collaboration to ensure smoother workflows and faster delivery..
Results
Boosted development productivity by 60%, enabling faster delivery of key product features.
Reduced sprint spillover by 40%, improving on-time delivery of enhancements.
Cut post-release defects by 50%, enhancing product stability and reducing rework.
Freed up engineering capacity, allowing teams to focus on innovation instead of firefighting.
More Case Studies
Maximum Velocity
Empowering Product Teams to Build Faster, Iterate Smarter, and Deliver Impact
Intro
As the Axen team at Home Depot took on more initiatives and expanded the engineering team, Agile workflows became a bottleneck. The team faced slow development cycles, a bloated backlog, and inefficiencies that hindered feature releases and productivity.
Client
The Home Depot
Year
2022
My Role
Product Manager
Services
Strategy & Design
The Problem
The engineering team struggled with:
Slow development cycles, causing delays in feature releases and impacting business teams reliant on analytics tools.
Chaos due to manual work allocation: Tasks and assignments were distributed without a clear tracking system, leading to engineers experiencing extended periods without work while others were overwhelmed.
Lack of visibility: There was no effective way to track availability or progress, causing subtasks like code reviews and testing to fall through the cracks.
Blockers and dependencies were not properly managed or tracked, often forgotten until deadlines loomed, which led to last-minute scrambling and delays.
I led an Agile process optimization initiative, working closely with Engineering, Product, and Analytics teams to streamline workflows.
Key actions included:
✅ Optimizing Agile workflows by creating personalized dashboards based on cross-functional roles and Agile methodologies.
✅ Automating key engineering tasks, such as manual testing and deployments, to reduce manual effort and improve efficiency.
✅ Implementing clear KPIs to track development velocity, lead time, cycle time, and bug resolution rates, helping teams measure progress more effectively.
✅ Addressing bottlenecks in sprint execution, backlog management, and cross-team collaboration to ensure smoother workflows and faster delivery..
The Solution
Boosted development productivity by 60%, enabling faster delivery of key product features.
Reduced sprint spillover by 40%, improving on-time delivery of enhancements.
Cut post-release defects by 50%, enhancing product stability and reducing rework.
Freed up engineering capacity, allowing teams to focus on innovation instead of firefighting.
Results
