Starting with Athenian is really easy, you just need to properly configure your account and you are ready to go. But what should you do after you are all set? We've been helping our customers go through this journey. Up to today, we have identified two different kinds of customer profiles: the ones that have continuous improvement processes in place (like OKRs) and the ones that are starting in this journey.
It doesn't matter if you have the processes in place or if you are just starting your journey, to continuously improve the key points to remember are:
Be intentional about what to improve;
Have continuous visibility on where you stand;
Dedicate time to improve;
Remember that you cannot improve if you don't put consistent investment in doing so. Gains come from consistent effort.
I have a continuous improvement process:
Pick a metric: First thing we recommend is to go through Athenian and identify one metric you want to improve. Don't go to the most important metric but pick one that is easily actionable (for most of our customers, review time is something that they can tackle easily).
Add engineering metrics to your process: When you've chosen the metric you want to improve, make sure you're tracking it in your continuous improvement process and use Athenian to consistently validate where you are. The first thing you want to ensure is that you create a habit. Engineering metrics improvement should become part of your existing team's processes; When your teams are consistently looking at Athenian, continuously discussing the data and how to keep improving it, then we recommend looking into more meaningful (and often harder) metrics to improve.
Your main goal is to create a continuous feedback and improvement loop that cascades down to the teams.
I don't have any continuous improvement process in place:
If you don't use OKRs or other Goal setting approaches, we recommend that you:
Define a goal reviewing cadence: this is where you define your long-term goals and when you want to check their progress (goal review cycle). We recommend doing this quarterly.
Define the goals: when your goal cycle starts you want to define your goals. To do so take some time with your most influential leaders and look at the data in Athenian's dashboards. Pick 1 or 2 metrics that you believe can be changed through the quarter and define what their target should be. Something like "Reduce Review cycle time from 14 hours to 6 hours". Remember that these goals need to be memorable and actionable. If you're doing this for the first time, pick an easy goal to achieve, as you want to focus more on creating the habit than on achieving critical goals from the get-go.
Review goals periodically: an important topic around goal setting is to make sure you are continuously monitoring progress and adjusting towards achieving your goals. Assuming you have sprints in place, we recommend using your sprints to quickly review how you are in terms of achieving your goals, and what needs to be changed in order to get you there. Sprint retrospectives are a powerful tool to continuously understand what you can do if you're not improving your engineering efficiency goal.
Review your goals at the end of the cycle: whenever a cycle finishes always review your goals and understand what you've achieved. A good way to do this, depending on the size of your organization, is to conduct a metrics review meeting where all teams present to the whole org., or to sub-groups, what they have achieved and how. This will foster transparency, openness, and cross-pollination opportunities so that teams can learn with each other.
Whether you do or don't have a continuous improvement process in place, remember that it's critical for you to create alignment around goals. You want to maximise the effectiveness of the organization by making everyone row in the same direction. So use the quarter opportunities, not only to think about the next step improvement in the product but also about the next step for your organization.
Improving your organization needs to be as thought out as building your product.
These are just the basics of how to continuously improve using engineering data. Keep monitoring bottlenecks or potential improvement points, bring Product to the conversation as they are co-owners of the process and ensure organization alignment. If you have any questions or you want to get more strategies on how to improve, drop us a line and our Engineering Success team will always be available to share their experience with your team.