Sustainability in Fashion
Accelerating Value Delivery with the Flow Metrics
Recently, I was asked to speak at a seminar hosted by the local Chapter of the Project Management Institute (PMI). The seminar was on the challenges facing sustainable manufacturers in the fashion industry. Entitled “Sustainability in Fashion”, the seminar showcased a success story of Agile adoption in a company that had predominantly followed the waterfall approach for software development. As the Agile Coach supporting this work I had the privilege of telling the story alongside the company’s Sustainability Program Director.
Introducing Agile Transformation
Like many, the company agreed to a three-month pilot of Agile ways of working with the Sustainability Team. The pilot was successful and convinced the company’s management to extend the adoption of Agile, with a cadence of producing working product in two-week Sprints. This transition marked a departure from the past, where the company saw only two releases in a span of 12 months. Adopting Agile increased the pace of software delivery, resulting in a new release every month.
Navigating Challenges in Sustainability Reporting
The second chapter of the story was more challenging. After 6 months, the company faced new sustainability reporting requirements in its major markets, especially the European Union. This resulted in a growing backlog of demand for new features by the Agile Team. The pressure to enhance delivery speed was high.
Then the story took a twist. Concerns emerged from end-users about the quality of the software being produced. Production defects were on the rise, which leads to delays in compliance reporting when new features failed to operate as expected.
To make matters worse, technical debt was accumulating as infrastructure improvements for cloud migration were postponed to avoid delivery delays. The need for a new approach became evident. It was time to step back and assess the broader landscape of how the Team could deliver value more efficiently.
In response to these challenges, we ran an improvement kata with the Team. They saw that their velocity of completing tasks was high, yet the speed of actual value delivery was decreasing due to defects that consumed capacity in rework. They needed a holistic view of value delivery — a way to deliver more rapidly without sacrificing quality.
Flow Metrics: Taking a Holistic Perspective
Enter Mik Kirsten’s Flow Framework, based on his book, “Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework.” Unlike traditional metrics such as story points or developer utilisation, the Flow Framework offers metrics which take a perspective of value stream delivery from end to end.
We worked with the Team to explore the Flow Metrics and determine what benefits could be derived. It was decided that two metrics were a good place to start: Flow Time and Flow Efficiency.
Flow Time helps gauge the time from when work is started on a Flow Item to the time of value delivery, thereby providing a measure of speed and predictability.
Flow Efficiency helps determine the proportion of Flow Items actively being worked on. It is used to identify where waste and wait states are holding up value delivery.
Both metrics were implemented and tracked via custom dashboards using the company’s Business Intelligence (BI) tool, with data sourced from the project management system. The Flow dashboards provided insights on what activities were causing waste and increasing the time of value delivery to the end user.
Realising the Benefits
After three months the improvements were clear. The Team’s perspective shifted from output metrics such as Story Points to a broader perspective on increased efficiency, reduced waste, and true value delivery. This improvement had positive business impact as it enabled the company to meet is sustainability reporting compliance requirements in all major markets. Specifically:
Flow Time: The Team reported an improvement in average Flow Time (work start to value delivery) of 6 months down to 4-5 weeks per feature.
Flow Efficiency: The Team experienced an average increase from app. 15% to app. 30% Flow Efficiency. Note that 40% Flow Efficiency is considered excellent.
The Team’s engagement also increased as they delivered much more frequently, more predictably and with higher quality. This gained the respect of management and end-users, and the Team was asked to present their success story at a Company Town Hall.
Endnote
This journey in the fashion industry, driven by sustainability and accelerated value delivery, led the company to adopt the Flow Metrics of Flow Time and Flow Efficiency. These metrics have allowed the Team to navigate the complexities of the sustainability reporting, measure speed of delivery, and ensure value is delivered efficiently. The integration of the Flow Framework was a game-changer, providing the Team with a holistic view that transcended traditional Agile metrics.
[1] Project Management Institute
[2] Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework
[3] Flow Metrics: A Business Leader’s Guide to Measuring What Matters in Software Delivery https://www.planview.com/resources/articles/using-flow-metrics-to-optimize-software-delivery/#:~:text=Measuring%20Flow%20Metrics%20allows%20technology,that%20align%20with%20business%20goals.
[4] European Union: Corporate sustainability reporting
