How Tração Online achieved effectiveness and efficiency in business scaling with agile methods and data-driven decisions

The pursuit of innovation and business growth must be coupled with high-level experimentation. This is because testing a hypothesis requires a structured model with metrics and indicators that justify the actions taken and the results obtained. This agile methods aligned with shared deliveries, provides scalability for the company, enabling data-driven decision-making and distributed knowledge among the team.

Challenge

Online Traction is a company that helps other businesses validate their ideas, services, and products through their sustainable innovation and experimentation methodology. In this sense, they focus on gaining traction for new solutions in the market. With the arrival of the pandemic, there were reductions in investments in innovation and experimentation projects. Consequently, this market shift required the company to reassess its strategies and processes.

At that moment, the challenge for the company was to restructure processes and operational, tactical, and strategic indicators to generate insights and outline the next steps. Additionally, they needed to achieve repeatability and scalability in activities by sharing knowledge that was previously restricted to a few professionals (heroes).

Solution

With the aim of ensuring client growth and scaling their service delivery solutions, Objective’s agile consulting worked together with the internal team to restructure processes and indicators with agile methods, as well as promote knowledge dissemination. This enabled the client to make reliable data-driven decisions while transitioning from a hero mode (quality delivery restricted to one professional) to implementing a consistent process of shared delivery.

The agile methods consulting went through several stages described below:

Knowledge leveling

The training and knowledge leveling process in Lean, Kanban, and Unified Flow was implemented. Internal workshops, mentoring sessions, and Q&A sessions were developed.

Tooling

The existing tools did not meet the new service-oriented model and did not provide the necessary information for decision-making at the ideal speed. Therefore, there was a tooling change and cost reduction, as it generated more insights, increased speed in processes, and decision-making.

Service mapping

The different service flows and expectations for each of them were mapped. This process helped relate tactical and operational metrics, such as Lead Time and SLE (Service Level Expectations) for important steps within the flow.

Introduction of OKRs

With the strategic direction of the company defined, the OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) tool was introduced to monitor quarterly objectives. This process allowed for the prioritization of initiatives, the creation of a learning history, and a shortened internal feedback cycle with continuous adjustments.

Cadences

In an evolutionary manner, cadences were introduced among teams. For example, Dailies and Weeklies. These meetings helped with alignment and risk reduction, as well as monitoring progress and updating indicators. As needed, operational reviews, reviews of mapped services, and portfolio-level meetings were added.

Results

The consulting had the following results:

Effectiveness Results

• Strategic alignment based on data, numbers, and indicators;
• Greater alignment of the company’s strategy with operations, with transparency and synergy among everyone;
• Definition and monitoring of executed OKRs and initiatives;
• Pivoting to a new strategic scenario within a quarter.

Efficiency Results

• Visibility of everything in the system and a real understanding of the organization’s demand and capacity;
• Definition of services, Lead Time, and SLE. It was observed that services that exceeded the initial defined expectation negatively impacted NPS;
• Operational and tactical metrics began to be used for decision-making.

Customer Feedback

Objective’s Agile Consultancy played a crucial role in business management development, enhancing knowledge, evolving management practices, and strengthening the company culture.

“Objective has been extremely valuable in developing a culture anchored in processes and indicators, from strategic to operational layers. The consulting services helped level the teams’ knowledge and systematically implement Agile practices in our processes.”

Dalker Walter, CEO of Tração Online

Furthermore, there has been a significant improvement in process maturity at Tração Online. This increased maturity has brought new perspectives to the company regarding products, clients, and the market.

“We were already using the Kanban model but with low maturity. Consequently, there were multiple boards for each person to work on, lacking predictability or efficiency metrics. Now, we have progressed to a more advanced model where the entire team can visualize all projects, ensuring a more predictable workflow, bottleneck control, increased transparency, and better team alignment. This management improvement has enabled a complete transformation of the company, including product launches, acquiring new clients, and expanding our market.”

Dalker Walter, CEO of Tração Online

Discover how Objective can assist your company in restructuring processes and indicators using Agile methods. Contact us right now!