Overview
A leading international retail organization faced persistent challenges in its IT transformation program. With 40+ teams operating across multiple countries, the organization struggled with unclear metrics, unpredictable delivery, and declining trust between teams and stakeholders.
Despite claiming to use Scrum, teams lacked clarity on what to measure, how to improve, and how to communicate progress effectively.
Felix, a Scrum Master Chapter Lead overseeing 15+ Scrum Masters, recognized that traditional Velocity and Story Points weren't providing the necessary insights. Drawing on previous experience with Flow Metrics, he partnered with Professional Scrum Trainer Alex Hardt to introduce a comprehensive Flow Metrics training program.
Within months, the initiative transformed not just delivery performance but the entire culture of transparency and trust across the division involved.
Challenges
The transformation team faced multiple interconnected problems:
Measurement Confusion: Teams lacked a consistent way to measure and communicate their actual delivery speed. Story Points and Velocity created endless debates without providing actionable insights. Management couldn't understand what teams were actually accomplishing.
Poor Predictability: The division committed to quarterly planning cycles (PI Planning) with international stakeholders across the US, UK, and Australia. However, Spillover Rates reached 60-70%, meaning most planned work wasn't completed on time. This created a pattern where stakeholders felt "you promise us things at the start and don't deliver them at the end."
Dependency Management: Dependencies between teams created bottlenecks and delays. Teams would start work only to discover they were blocked, waiting for other teams, which created flow debt and extended Cycle Times. Work accumulated particularly in integration phases, where cross-team coordination was required.
Data Quality Crisis: When teams first attempted to implement Flow Metrics, they discovered their data was fundamentally unreliable. Items remained open for 850+ days. Status transitions weren't tracked properly. Work types weren't categorized consistently. The tools and processes weren't capturing what actually happened.
Communication Breakdown: Trust between teams, management, and international stakeholders had eroded. Without objective data, every conversation devolved into subjective arguments about performance. Teams felt they couldn't say no to new work, leading to chronic overcommitment.
Cultural Dysfunction: The focus on starting new work rather than finishing existing work created a system optimized for busyness rather than delivering value. Teams lacked the language and tools to push back effectively.
Initiating Change
After attending Alex's Professional Scrum with Kanban (PSK) classes, Felix and his team returned with renewed energy and a clear framework in place. Rather than mandating a top-down transformation, they followed the principle of Kanban: "Start with what you do now."
The catalyst was making work visible through Flow Metrics. Alex's training emphasized three key areas that became eye-opening game-changers for Felix and his team:
Conceptual Clarity: The training provided an unprecedented level of focus. Participants finally understood exactly which metrics mattered most and why. After years of being overwhelmed by competing frameworks and metrics, this clarity cut through the noise.
Little's Law: Understanding the mathematical relationship between Work in Progress (WIP), Throughput, and Cycle Time provided teams with a simple yet powerful mental model. Felix noted, "Actually, you don't need much more than this for the next three years. This gives you enough to work on."
Experiential Learning: The TWiG simulation game made product development complexity tangible for people at all experience levels, including those new to IT or Scrum Master roles. This created shared understanding across the division about why Flow matters.
Immediate Action
Directly following the training, self-organized working groups formed spontaneously. Without managerial directive, teams took ownership of applying what they'd learned. Initiatives emerged around data quality improvement and probabilistic forecasting, with participants declaring "we're applying this to ourselves now." This grassroots momentum signaled something different. The concepts had resonated deeply enough to drive autonomous action.
Solution
The implementation unfolded in interconnected waves:
1. Data Quality Initiative
Teams immediately recognized they couldn't measure Flow without reliable data. A grassroots initiative formed to establish consistent data capture practices. Rather than external pressure, teams now had intrinsic motivation. They wanted accurate metrics for themselves. This discipline improvement became foundational for everything that followed.
2. Work in Progress Reduction
Armed with Work Item Age visibility, teams addressed their "orphans." Started but never finished items. They systematically:
- Archived obsolete work
- Split large items into shippable pieces
- Implemented and honored WIP Limits
- Focused on finishing over starting
For the first time, teams were reducing Flow Debt rather than accumulating it. Work in Progress was cut roughly in half at both the team and strategic levels.
3. Probabilistic Forecasting
The division adopted Monte Carlo simulations for forecasting, replacing commitment-based planning with probability-based communication. Instead of "we'll finish this," conversations shifted to "we have an 85% probability of completing these four initiatives in the next quarter."
This transformed stakeholder relationships. Felix explained: "The communication style fundamentally changed. Previously, it was 'you didn't deliver, that's terrible.'Now it's 'there was an 85% probability. It didn't work out this time, but it will next time.'" When the 15% happens, it's understood as natural system variation rather than failure.
4. Flow-Enhanced Scrum Events
The team reimagined Scrum Events through a Flow lens:
- Sprint Planning: Monte Carlo "How Many" simulations based on historical Throughput replaced gut-feel forecasting.
- Daily Scrums: Walking the board right-to-left, focused on unblocking aged items rather than individual status updates.
- Sprint Retrospectives: Flow Metrics provided evidence-based foundations, making these sessions constructive rather than emotional venting.
5. Dependency Management
In a SAFe context, where several teams work on initiatives often with a large number of dependencies, actively managing those dependencies is crucial.
In Felix's division, using PI Planning and quarterly releases, with multiple teams working on shared initiatives. They improved dependency management on a cross-team level by reducing WIP and increasing transparency, enabling teams to proactively manage their dependencies and complete initiatives more quickly.
6. Strategic Integration
Flow Metrics is integrated with the division's OKR process and WSJF prioritization.
Leadership discussions could now incorporate empirical data, such as "Based on our metrics, we have a 95% probability of completing this in two quarters" or "This has only a 35% probability of completing in three months. The risk is too high to start."
Results
Within approximately one year, the transformation delivered measurable improvements:
Quantitative Gains
- Spillover rates decreased from 60-70% to 20-30%
- Throughput increased significantly (specific percentages varied by team)
- Work in Progress reduced by approximately 50% at both the team and strategic levels
- Dependency-related delays decreased as teams proactively managed cross-team work
Qualitative Transformation
Transparency: Teams and management now share a common language for discussing delivery performance. Data replaced opinion in critical conversations.
Trust: The relationship between teams, local management, and international stakeholders fundamentally improved. Felix noted: "We went from 'the countries hate us and we don't trust our management' to 'we're all in the same boat.'"
Focus: Teams gained the ability and confidence to say no to work that would compromise their predictability and consistency. The division shifted from valuing starting work to valuing finishing work.
The most telling indicator wasn't a metric. It was the cultural transformation. Transparency, trust, and focus all increased significantly across the division.
Conclusion
This transformation demonstrates that lasting change comes not from abandoning frameworks but from evolving how we use them. By integrating Flow Metrics with existing Scrum practices, this division:
- Replaced subjective debates with objective data
- Created intrinsic motivation for continuous improvement
- Built trust through transparent, probability-based communication
- Established a scalable model that is now spreading to additional divisions
The approach continues to bear fruit. Felix has since moved to a new division where he's replicating the model with a new team of 20 Scrum Masters. The original training participants are now multipliers. Running their own TWiG game sessions and coaching peers on Flow Metrics.
For organizations struggling with agile maturity, the lesson is clear: sometimes the missing ingredient isn't a new framework but better visibility into the one you already have.
Flow Metrics provided that visibility, transforming not just delivery efficiency, effectiveness, and predictability but the entire culture of how teams work, communicate, and continuously improve.
Confidentiality Note
At the client's explicit request, both the individual's name and the company name have been pseudonymized. The case description and results, however, are based on a real project.