Transformation of Chaos [Consultancy Case]

In the consultancy process, one of the most important things is diving into the root causes. It’s always a great investigation, and you never know what you will uncover or where you will start! ???♂???

Welcome to the first journey down below!

Initial Request: “We need someone closer on-site and in sync with our team to deal with ongoing issues and improve processes.”

My Diagnostic Report:

• The team has no clear workflow process (SDLC) ??
• Lack of qualifications and required competencies ??
• Priorities have been changing rapidly a few times a month, resulting in infrequent releases ??
• No QA process (they used Slack to send each other .apk files) ?
• The team struggled with an outdated React-Native framework and legacy code written by a previous, less expensive vendor ??

Hmm. Maybe I missed something, but it already seems to be a complete mess, doesn’t it? ??

How to beat this Hydra? Where to start?

1. Get the team – The first thing I did was set up 1-to-1 meetings with each team member to discuss problems and possible solutions. I collected feedback in a spreadsheet and noted that some key players were burned out and considering leaving the team ????
2. Analyze feedback – I prioritized the feedback and started communicating with stakeholders on how to address it: QA process deployment, refactoring priorities, requirements rework, and establishing a framework to systematize workflow ????
3. Act as Project Manager – I helped the project create a project wiki and documented basic policies, Git Flow, SDLC, workflow, and other rules of the game ????
4. Deploy Agile Framework – In parallel, I communicated further improvements such as CI/CD, unit test coverage, and infrastructure improvements to the team and the customer’s C-level ????
5. Improve Predictability – While the team kept missing deadlines (due to numerous reasons), the customer wanted to achieve predictability. I provided a path and its steps ?????
6. Enhance the Team – We hired a QA engineer with the required skills and capacities, ramped up the dev team, and added a skilled NetOps part-time. NetOps and I reviewed our AWS setup, saving around $5K monthly by adjusting capacities ??????
7. Implement CI/CD – We agreed with the customer on a refactoring plan (cleaning code during new implementations or rewriting when more effective) and implemented CI/CD ?????
8. Act as Proxy PO – I worked as a Proxy Product Owner for a while to ensure the requirements creation, approval, and decomposition flow were in place and working well ???

By this time, I had covered all the issues I initially identified:

• SDLC was fixed, and the Scrum framework was deployed step-by-step, practice-by-practice ????
• Required qualifications and competencies were added (skilled QA and NetOps) ??????
• Priorities were managed through SDLC and requirements lifecycle flow ????
• The QA process was improved with CI/CD and automated tests ????
• Refactoring started, and the delivery cycle became shorter and shorter ????

Another huge part was involving five C-level managers in the process and making them more in sync with the team and its real capacities. But I would say that might be a story for another case ??

Most of the involved persons left me great feedback, which you can read on my LinkedIn page ????

P.S. This is the first case I’m writing about, so let me know your feedback in the comments, and I’ll consider sharing more with you! ????

Cheers! Ilya Kuznetsov. ??