Tax Software
Tax Software
This company was a large fortune 500 company. Our team was part of an acquisition based in Omaha, NE. Our division employed approximately 75 people overall.
Talk to Us TodayQuarterly Estimated Taxes
This was a newly offered web product that allowed customers to pay their quarterly estimated taxes online.
Let’s Talk TodaySlightly Distributed
The team consisted of 1 Product Owner, 1, Scrum Master, 6 developers, 1 BA/UX, 2 QA. 1 developer was located in the San Diego office while the rest of the team was located in Omaha, NE.
Talk to Us TodayPredictability
I became the Scrum Master of the team after the initial release. There were many problems with the production site that caused the following issues:
An extreme number of customer support calls resulting in an high cost for our call center.
The inability to predictably deliver new features to our customers.
The team was spending most of their time working on production support requests and was not able to work on delivering enhanced functionality.
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Step 1 – Stabilize the Current System
The team proposed to the Product Owner that we spend a full iteration stabilizing the current application without delivering new functionality. The Product Owner agreed and our team spent the next iteration focusing only on stabilizing the application so it would not crash.
Step 2 – Develop Strategy to Handle Production Support Requests
The team successfully stabilized the application which dramatically reduced our call volume. However, there were still many problems that had to be fixed, meaning that the team had to continue to complete production support items that could not wait until the end of the sprint.
The approach the team took was to dedicate one team member to working only on production support requests. Since many of the requests were simple to fix yet highly valuable to the customers, the team chose a junior developer to work on these support requests with the guidance of the senior developers, freeing up the rest of the team to work on new functionality.
Additionally, instead of working on every production support request in a first in, first out approach, the Product Owner would prioritize each support request, and if possible, slot them into future iterations.
Talk to Us TodayPredictability
The application was stable, and the team was predictably able to deliver new enhancements along with working on production support requests. The significantly reduced costs and improved our ability to deliver.
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