Global financial giant advances Enterprise-Wide Rollout of KnowHOW

A global financial leader sought to enhance its software delivery processes to support its complex portfolio of services and products. Facing challenges with inconsistent reporting and manual KPI consolidation, the organization leveraged knowHOW's centralized platform to streamline agile delivery and drive data-driven decisions.

Challenges

This organisation faced several obstacles that impeded its ability to ensure high-quality software delivery:

Fragmented Dashboards: Diverse tools like Jira and GitLab offered isolated views but lacked a unified project health assessment.
Inconsistent KPIs: Metrics varied across projects and were tracked using excel reports, lacking a standard framework to measure performance effectively.
Manual Reporting Overhead: Aggregating and analyzing data required significant manual effort, hindering productivity and slowing decision-making.

Their approach with knowHOW

They adopted KnowHOW to overcome these challenges by integrating data from existing SDLC tools, enabling standardized KPI reporting and actionable insights into their workflows:

Unified Dashboards: Integrated knowHOW with Jira and GitLab to provide both consolidated and tailored views for program and squad-level insights.
Security Enhancements: Fortified knowHOW's security features with Kerberos ID authentication and robust authorization protocols for secure usage.
Enhanced DORA Metrics: Partnered with knowHOW to natively support GitLab integration, facilitating accurate tracking of deployment frequency, change failure rate, lead time for change, and mean time to recover.
Automation Features: Eliminated manual reporting by automating KPI consolidation and trend analysis.
Process Alignment: Introduced standardized processes for KPI tracking, defect management, and sprint health reviews.
Training & Feedback: Conducted sessions to onboard teams and continuously gathered feedback to refine KPI features, including multi-squad selection, Iteration KPIs, Quality KPIs, DORA metrics, the KPI Maturity Wheel, and more.

Results

Reduction in defect injection rates, from 17.9% to 8%.
93% Automation Coverage, up from 79%, driving better sprint outcomes.
Improvement in sprint velocity, from an average of 15 story points to 20 story points, increasing sprint efficiency.
Improvement in sprint predictability, enabling more reliable delivery timelines.
Accelerated software delivery by analyzing code review efficiency with metrics like mean time to merge and check-ins vs. merge requests.

Looking Ahead

It plans to expand KnowHOW adoption across its global teams, leveraging advanced analytics to further optimize software delivery and drive strategic alignment.

Testimonials

“The Iteration and Quality tabs are proving to be the most useful areas for us.

Iteration: Being able to see, in simple numbers, our current Overall Commitment, next to our Initial Commitment, with Work Remaining just below it, makes it very easy to review the snapshot in time, and convey the overall sprint health to the squads.I especially like the First Time Pass Rate, in tandem with the Defect Count KPIs below it. Many squads have found this to be a very effective way of illustrating defect/testing patterns. The Dev Completion KPI is another one that I find a really good way to drive action throughout the sprint.
Quality: The First Time Pass Rate is very useful during retrospectives. It tells the story of the squad’s issue quality in a very succinct manner while also enabling Scrum Masters to draw the relationship between QA pass rates and deployment/delivery impact.
Other KPIs in the Quality tab that we use heavily during retros are: Created vs. Resolved (with a bit of a grain of salt due to how it handles spillover), and Defect Count.
Overall, since the Iteration tab was made available, I have personally found that reviewing these KPIs regularly has positively impacted not only the conversations we’re able to now have but also the actual numbers. I think we’ve been able to reduce average defect insertion rates, improve our sprint cadence reliability, and it has made our retrospectives more focused. “

‘‘Act as quality gate-keepers through KPI reviews using our proprietary tool-set PS KnowHOW, Entry and Exit criteria checks for testing phase’’

‘‘Data-driven dashboards provided by KnowHOW (for metrics such as Velocity, Lead Time, Reliability, Scope Burn Down, etc) to continuously monitor, and revise estimates and plans’’

‘‘Effective test monitoring and reporting pave the path to software success, illuminating progress and illuminating areas for improvement.’’

‘‘KnowHow makes team measure and align on a set of high bar Engineering and Agile KPIs and metrics which generates the right behavior in both business and development team and help engineers to identify areas and focus and fill gaps promptly.’’