The Challenge
Despite its success in the UK, under the VoucherCodes.com brand, there was a perception that the development teams had lost their enthusiasm, creativity and effectiveness in delivering future product enhancements.
Agility in Mind looked, listened and showed the senior team that their aspirations for the business in the UK was no longer aligned with plans for product build.
With a strong business strategy and engineering team, the obvious weak point was the product function between the two, where weak leadership had led to a communication break between vision and reality.
Our Approach
Rather than merely set them in the right direction, Agility in Mind were invited to lead and run the UK product team for three months, assuming the office of interim VP product. The remit also included training and coaching of the product team in new ways of working across web, mobile, partnerships, SEO and user experience.
Outcome
Acting as an intermediary between strategic business aspirations and operations, Agility in Mind brought a relentless focus on what was truly going to be the greatest benefit to the business as a whole. This wasn’t only focused on enhanced features and new offerings, it also required new talent within the product teams and expert support to recruit, transition and hand over to a new VP Product – to ensure delivery on the aspirations of the business whilst keeping existing customers satisfied.
Agility in Mind were able to assess and articulate the challenges faced by the teams with clear approaches on how to resolve and enhance them, assisting in quicker effective decision making – from project level to senior stakeholders in the Board.
As well as the new approaches to product development Agility in Mind also bedded in a new culture of sharing, learning and collaboration, meaning that the new approaches were understood, willingly adopted and sustainable. This left the teams in a better position, better resourced and better focused.
