Qualitative Return-On-Investment

The use of Agilibo supports a structured agile transformation in the company and the effective implementation of agile structures, processes, and roles, so that less time and costs are incurred for consulting, training the various roles in the team, and establishing the agile operating system.

 

The Agilibo Core module makes it easy to introduce agile work in the team and supports the agile team setup. For example, it includes the definition of the team and the specific roles (with different access options), the structure of sprints with a specific sprint length, the definition of a product goal, the creation of a product backlog and the definition of sprint backlogs. Importantly, in case of already existing backlogs in Jira, these can be transferred directly and can also be combined with both tools through an integration solution without causing duplication of work.

 

It is important to emphasize that Agilibo can support all Scrum roles in the shared leadership approach to fulfil their responsibilities in the best possible way:

• Developers are guided through the sprint by Agilibo in such a way that they manage to create a usable increment each sprint. They are supported in using Planiac to jointly develop a realistic plan for the sprint in the form of the sprint backlog. They can define a Definition of Done and assign items to the backlog to ensure outcome quality. And via the Daily module and the Sprint backlog they are guided every day to adapt their plan each day towards the Sprint Goal.

• The Product Owner is supported by Agilibo in maximizing the value of the product by being offered functionalities for effective product backlog management. Agilibo also ensures that the product goal and product backlog are transparent and visible, and that the product backlog items are described and communicated in a structured manner.

• Agilibo as a digital guide helps the Scrum Master to establish Scrum as defined in the Scrum guide and to support others in the team and outside the team in the organization to understand Scrum theory and practice. The facilitated meeting modules also help the Scrum Master to continuously improve the effectiveness and practices in the team. Agilibo helps to ensure that all Scrum events take place and are positive, productive, and kept within the timebox. In addition, there are various points in the Agilibo process where obstacles can be identified and options for removing them can be discussed.

 

The structuring and digitally supported facilitation of the Scrum rituals by the modules enables Scrum Masters and Product Owners to quickly settle into their role and focus on the essentials. This results in lower costs for onboarding and training the roles, and people with less professional experience (and therefore less salary) can also take on these roles. 

 

Agilibo supports the whole team in working together in a self-managed and cross-functional way, and in adhering to the Scrum process in a self-organized manner even in the temporary absence of a Scrum Master. Agilibo also makes it possible to involve stakeholders, customers, and users, create transparency and facilitate collaboration and feedback. It also helps to break down any barriers between the Scrum Team and stakeholders or even non-agile departments in the company.

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Agilibo helps the Scrum Master to lead, train, and coach the entire organization in its Scrum adoption. The guided processes facilitate the coaching, give the transformation a structure and help to avoid falling back into old patterns.

 

As the sole tool, Agilibo includes all the functionalities required for successful coordination and collaboration in agile sprints. This saves costs for other collaboration software (e.g. separate solutions for Planning Poker or Retrospectives). In addition, time and costs for cognitive re-engagement are also reduced by switching between applications.

 

In addition, the structure and guided processes enable the entire team to work together more effectively and efficiently. It helps the team to implement the empirical Scrum pillars of transparency, inspection, and adaptation. The team process and work become visible through the different modules and functionalities to both, those performing the work as well as those receiving the work. The facilitated meeting rituals ensure frequent inspection to detect potentially undesirable outcomes as well as to document feedback and adjust artefacts like Sprint or Product Backlog accordingly early on. Ensuring transparency, inspection and adaptation has a positive effect on team performance in terms of the quality and quantity of output. This will also increase customer satisfaction and sales figures.

 

Agilibo helps the team members to become more proficient in living the five Scrum values of commitment, focus, openness, respect, and courage. Using Planiac, the team commits to achieve its goals and to support each other. The sprint process in Agilibo , including the sprint backlog and the meeting rituals supported by separate micro-services is so well interlinked that it helps the team to work in a focused way to make the best possible progress toward the Sprint goal. Openness, respect, and courage are also strengthened by the digital-assisted meetings, in which a safe space is created in which every team member is actively involved.

 

 

Agilibo's structure and digitally supported facilitation helps to create a better team atmosphere, more mutual support and therefore also solution-oriented and innovative collaboration (Redlbacher et al., 2022). The opportunities for feedback, the documentation of feedback and the supported process for adaptation measures from the feedback in all core meetings (planning, retrospective, daily and review) lead to the implementation of the agile principle of continuous improvement of the product but also the further development of the individuals in the team. This increases performance in terms of quality and therefore customer satisfaction (but also reduces costs caused by errors) (Rietze & Zacher, 2023).

In addition, a higher rate of feedback and adaptation also enables more innovation in the team (Kakar, 2018; Malik et al., 2021), which in turn can increase customer satisfaction.

 

The Planiac module guides the team to answer the relevant questions in the planning meeting. Firstly, by defining and discussing the Sprint Goal, why the Sprint is valuable? What can be done this sprint is done by guiding the team through the process steps in Planiac. First, the product owner presents a backlog item, the team refines the item, estimates, and documents the effort of the backlog item in the form of story points (or other customized estimates) and decides which items should be completed in the sprint. In the final step, the team can determine how the chosen work will get done? It is possible to decompose the product backlog items into smaller work items. The new sprint starts immediately after the planning meeting.

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The Planiac module (Planning Poker) supports coordination and cooperation within the team. Through the playful approach, the team learns together to use their knowledge and strengths collectively in the discussions to continually improve the accuracy of the predictions. Various metric practices, such as burn-downs, burn-ups, or cumulative flows, are implemented in Agilibo Core to support the forecast progress. An improved predictive accuracy for the implementation of new functionalities will also promote user and customer satisfaction.

 

The structured execution of daily stand-ups with the support of the Daily Scrum module helps the team to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt the Sprint Backlog as necessary, adjusting the upcoming planned work. The structured implementation using a random wheel (“spinner”) helps to ensure that all team members are equally involved and not just the "loudest" ones occupy the room. It also helps to reduce complexity, maintain focus, and promote self-management. Overall, it improves communications, helps to identify impediments to reduce bottlenecks and downtime and to make decisions quickly. This promotes efficiency and performance, as well as eliminates the need for other meetings.

 

The SprintCollab module facilitates the Sprint Review meeting as a working session between the agile team and Stakeholders. It has the purpose to inspect the outcome of the Sprint and determine future adaptations. It guides the agile team demonstrate the results of their work to key stakeholders and to discuss the progress towards the Product goal in a structured way. Moreover, SprintCollab enables close involvement of customers and other stakeholders and guides the meeting process so that feedback can be obtained and tracked and adjustments in the Product backlog can be done accordingly to meet new opportunities. Active involvement and the opportunity to provide regular feedback also increases customer satisfaction.

 

The Retrospective module helps the team to improve its own ability to reflect and derive measures for continuous development to increase quality and effectiveness. The modules guide the team to inspect interactions, processes, and tools in the team, to identify assumptions and explore origins, and to identify changes and improvements. The various frames and the supported facilitation by Agilibo help the team to conduct an appreciative discussion based on the suggested questions what went well during the Sprint, what problems encountered, and how those problems were (or were not) solved. Agilibo helps the team to ensure all perspectives of team members are heard, thereby strengthening trust and psychological safety in the team (Peeters et al., 2022). This strengthens cohesion, motivation and cooperation within the team and reduces conflicts, which in turn has a positive impact on team performance.

 

Overall, Agilibo's support of teamwork has a positive impact on collaboration, communication, alignment, clarification of obstacles, and meeting effectiveness, especially in hybrid and fully virtual team settings. As a result, there is less potential for conflict and dissatisfaction. It has a positive effect on job satisfaction and motivation (Tripp et al., 2016; Setor & Joseph, 2019), engagement (Rietze & Zacher, 2022; 2023) and organizational commitment (Prommegger et al., 2019). This is accompanied by higher performance and efficiency of the team and individual team members (Junker et al., 2022; Peeters et al., 2022, Koch et al., 2023;).

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It can also be assumed that there will be less loss of staff and therefore lower costs for onboarding new team members. A reduction in sick days and other absences due to exhaustion is also assumed (Rietze and Zacher, 2022; Augner & Schermuly, 2023).

The structure also has a positive effect on meeting efficiency. All Agilibo Meeting modules help to keep to the defined timebox. This should improve the outcome of meetings and reduce the overall meeting time. This also reduces the meeting costs incurred.

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