Therabody - Portfolio Process Overhaul

Tech Holding establishes a PMO group to bring organization Therabody's start up environment

    Challenges

    • A young start-up company with a small technology team that had very limited organization when it came to handling new feature requests or changes to their new mobile application or other platforms.
    • Features and projects were often prioritized on the fly without visibility across the organization or with other stakeholders that had expected their requests to be delivered.
    • The company’s technology roadmap was not documented or well managed.
    • Requirements for features came from a variety of sources, resulting in conflicts of features and no clear direction to the delivery team.

    Solution

    • Create a portfolio management process for all proposed projects and features.
    • Establish a feature intake and planning steps that will further develop and maintain perspective on how to strategically manage the product backlog in the context of the technology roadmap.
    • Increase efficiency of project prioritization, transparency and communication amongst key stakeholders.
    • Promote the practice of identifying owners of product features in order to have a singular point of contact and coordination of stakeholder participation.
    • Leveraging project tracking and collaboration tools such as Jira and Smartsheets for visibility.
    • A portfolio process framework to ensure a healthy and ever-evolving prioritized product backlog to guide the teams along an iterative development path.
    • Weekly portfolio dashboard reporting distributed to the organization.

    Benefits

    • New and improved methods and tools that ensure open and fluid communication across all stakeholders and Therabody leadership.
    • Product development based on iteration and continuous feedback which results in user experience excellence and meeting business goals in a timely manner.
    • With a prioritized roadmap, the project planning is streamlined and coordinated to meet company marketing initiatives or partnerships; it also enables the team to support any other unplanned issues that need to be addressed.

    Engagement

    The Tech Holding Agile Project Management team collaborated with Therabody leadership to identify pain points in the previous process and recommend best practices to establish a new portfolio workflow. Our specific objectives were:

    • Bring organization to a fast-paced start-up workflow.

    • Identify and document owners of features/project and establish guidelines for transitioning through the workflow.

    • Document and publish the new portfolio workflow and educate the Therabody team on the new process.

    • Introduce the scrum framework to the organization and invite stakeholders to participate in applicable sprint & scrum ceremonies.

    Our Approach

    While the Therabody team had been meeting to review the mobile application & roadmap at a micro-level on a weekly basis, there was macro view and no defined process; this led to shifting priorities of initiatives that were not fully approved or ready to be addressed at creative or engineering level.

    Tech Holding firmly believes that for any framework or process to produce maximum results, there needs to be proactive ownership and a ‘quarterback mindset’ around the delivery of the projects. Tech Holding program management championed and oversaw the process from project proposal to development kickoff to project delivery. Being that this is a start-up, lean, environment, the deliverables for each milestone were straight forward: requirements, designs, stories.

    Case Outcomes

    Tech Holding successfully integrated an Agile portfolio methodology for the Therabody technology team, where none previously existed. They now have portfolio tooling, a portfolio workflow processes that guides projects through proposal and approval and beyond, and transparency across the organization.

    Executive management has praised Tech Holding’s Program Management team for the visibility and alignment we’ve provided for the organization’s product roadmap. The prioritized and prepared backlog resulted in increased output for the delivery team by 50% - the team had better requirements and acceptance criteria reviewed during backlog reviews, resulting in more productive sprints.

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