Acceleration of
fast-close reporting
TRANSFORMISE IT
Taking agile to
the next level
FTSE 100 retail company transformed their accounting and year end processes as part of fast close project.
What we did
To reduce lead times for the quarterly and year-end reporting processes, we worked with a team of financial reporting experts to define process measures to increase process flow and speed. At the start of the engagement, the teams had been using basic agile principles and scrum ceremonies, as well as a mix of waterfall and agile processes without a clear, stringent approach.
In addition to the lack of an agile foundation, it was intrinsic that the sheer workload within a short timeframe of consolidating multiple reports, and a team spread across multiple locations, was the bottleneck to increasing process times. It was clear that our primary task was to take agile processes to the next level with the goal of increasing speed, flow, and proper delivery sequencing. Additional role clarity should shorten process times, for example, through clear ownership among SMEs with hands-on review instead of multiple reviews, to strengthen quality in reporting and reduce unnecessary overhead.
To achieve this, three of our most experienced Scrum Masters worked closely with the Scrum tribes, taking measures from finance process experts into consideration, to enhance the agile procedures in the teams.
We worked closely with the product owner to refine the backlog, and improve sprint planning and progress reporting by using PBI effort optimization with planning poker, burndown charts, and the weighted job-first method for prioritizing workload. As a central steering committee, we implemented an integration team that collaborated in a daily Scrum of Scrum event and appointed SMEs to address cross-team collaboration in an agile manner with minimal process overhead.

What we accomplished
Through improving Scrum events such as sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, and sprint presentations, and coaching the delivery teams as servant leaders in Scrum principles, we were able to improve flow and year-end reporting times by 30%.

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