From idea to product in just 6 weeks

Overview

In just six weeks from idea to a ready-to-use solution, Sto, an international building materials company, fully embraced agile methods to optimize its online shop. Within three short development cycles, a solution optimized for user needs emerged and was usable for all customers of the Sto Group.

This was made possible by the Plug & Play Scrum Team from Amazing Outcomes, specializing in agile development of digital solutions. The experts of the Plug & Play Scrum Team developed a solution for Sto's customers faster, resulting in a higher Return on Investment (ROI).

About Sto

The Sto Group is an internationally leading manufacturer of products and systems for building coatings in the facade, interior, floor coating, and concrete repair segments, with headquarters in Stühlingen-Weizen, Baden-Württemberg. With over 5,600 employees in 38 countries, Sto develops, produces and distributes its solutions to skilled craftsmen, construction companies, architects, planning offices, and the real estate industry – also through an online shop, where customers can place orders and find practical tips for the application of products and materials.

To optimize its eCommerce sales strategy, Sto hired a Scrum Team to come into their organization by enlisting the services of the Plug & Play Scrum Team from Amazing Outcomes.

The Challenge: Increase users and revenue

The Sto online shop primarily targets small businesses. While larger companies typically use their own ERP systems for procurement. The online shop enables smaller businesses to buy materials in the online shop easily.

To increase user numbers and revenue through the online shop, Sto decided to focus on enhancing the customer experience.They wanted to create a mobile app to bring the online shop directly to customers' smartphones, allowing the entire ordering process (from product information to purchase, delivery options, and application assistance) to be accessible anywhere – in the office, warehouse or on the construction site.

However, estimating the development effort of a digital solution is often challenging, especially when no information is available about the features users really need. Insights into the scope and functionality of a successful solution are best gained through direct customer involvement. Sto, coming from a traditional approach to plan and manage projects, therefore sought out an approach that would make development and associated costs and risks more manageable while involving customers in the process.

The Solution: the Plug & Play Team

This is where the Plug & Play Team from Amazing Outcomes came into play. Amazing Outcomes is a professional services company based in Monheim am Rhein, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany specializing in the agile development of digital products and solutions.

When agreeing to work together, the Amazing Outcomes team sat down with Sto stakeholders to understand the business problem and define business goals. Using Evidence-Based Management, they worked together to define a Strategic Goal (percentage of their small business customers buy through the online shop regularly). They derived the Intermediate Goal from it (Product Goal in Scrum) and had a tactical goal (Sprint Goal) to work toward it. The Key Value Area (KVA) they focused on was Unrealized Value of the online shop and the Customer Satisfaction Gap that they learned about by talking to customers and showing them the app as a potential solution.

The Plug & Play Team was composed of Developers, a Product Owner, and a Scrum Master. As a well-coordinated team with all the necessary skills for developing a digital solution, they could start working immediately. This saved time for recruiting and team building, reduced cycle time and increased their Ability to Innovate. This also improved their Time to Learn many times over compared to their traditional approach of discussing the idea internally without customer feedback for a long period. The Plug & Play Scrum Team delivered a new functional version of the solution every two weeks by using 2-week Sprints. This allowed the client to verify risky assumptions more quickly, deliver optimized solutions earlier, and directly create more value for customers and the company.

The 2-week Sprints not only enabled a consistent alignment of the solution with customer needs, it also provided the client with the necessary transparency to guide development. Their Product Goal was: Validate if a mobile app will lead to more small businesses buying through the online shop. Progress toward the Product Goal was measured every two weeks based on a functioning solution. Each Sprint, the Plug & Play Scrum Team, the Sto team (Head of E-commerce and CIO), and their customers learned more about what was truly needed. Based on this, decisions were made on how to adjust development based on new insights, for example, if the solution's goal had already been achieved then the team knew additional features were not necessary. This helped increase the value of their investments (ROI).

How the Plug & Play Team Overcame the Challenge

Kicking off with the client's strategic goal as a starting point, the team followed a clear process – concluding in optimizing the Sto online shop's success.

As the first measurable milestone, the team examined the assumptions implicitly made by Sto regarding the idea of a mobile app. Hypotheses were formulated to empirically verify them, for example, “the customer will use the app to buy materials on the construction site while doing their work". In the first Sprint, within two weeks, the Scrum Team developed a mobile app with the necessary functions and features for testing and feedback. Then came the reality check: selected Sto customers tested the app with specific tasks in their direct work context.

The observations made were compared with the hypotheses – sometimes with surprising results. For example, during the first Sprint, the Product Owner and the Head of Online Sales traveled to real customers of Sto to share the Increment with them and observe them using it to solve a number of given challenges, for example, "Imagine you're running out of material x and you can't finish your job on this construction site. Here's a new app. Try to purchase new materials. Try to get it shipped to this construction site. Try to get help about this material..."

Many stakeholders including the CIO, Head of E-commerce, Marketing and Customer Support team members attended Sprint Reviews. Some to discuss insights and provide feedback, others to learn more about Scrum.

“We would have invested a lot of effort in features that our customers don't actually want if we had simply implemented our ideas for a mobile app. With this approach, we not only avoided a lot of unnecessary effort, but also developed better solutions for our customers even faster"”

Peter Dazer
Head of E-Commerce at Sto

“It's crucial that we don't just ask customers if they would use a mobile app or certain features but that we put a usable solution in their hands. Because often, users only realize what they really need through actual application in their work context. So, we learn together with users what a solution really needs to do.”

Johannes Geske
Professional Scrum Trainer at Scrum.org and Product Owner of the Plug & Play Scrum Team

At the end of the first Sprint, the Plug & Play Scrum Team presented the mobile app and insights from customer tests to Sto stakeholders. Based on that feedback, they took the necessary steps to collaboratively develop the next Sprint Goal.

In the second Sprint, the Plug & Play Scrum Team again developed a ready-to-use version of the mobile app and tested it with selected Sto customers – once again with the pivotal realization that many of the initially envisioned features were not needed by customers. In just two Sprints, the team verified all hypotheses, achieved the Product Goal, and provided a clear direction for the mobile app.

To move toward Sto's strategic goal and boost the online shop's success, the Plug & Play Scrum Team suggested to Sto stakeholders, in a third Sprint, further development of the mobile app to be usable by a large number of Sto customers. This approach would help complement previous qualitative examinations of customer needs with quantitative data, develop the mobile app in a targeted manner and provide all Sto customers with easier access to the online shop via the app.

Before the end of the third Sprint, a version of the mobile app emerged that could be productively used by all Sto customers with an improved customer experience. Additionally, telemetry data was now available, providing insights into app usage and showing how features are utilized.

What Sets the Plug & Play Team Apart

“I am impressed by the results that the Plug & Play Scrum Team achieved within just six weeks. I have noticed three crucial characteristics of the Plug & Play Scrum Team enabling it to create more business value sooner: absolute focus on goals, genuine teamwork and outcome-oriented use of tools and processes.”

Karsten Kaunat
Agile Coach at Sto

The Plug & Play Scrum Team helped Sto achieve short delivery and learning cycles, minimize integration efforts, and create the conditions for valuable product improvement.

1. Absolute Focus on Goals: The Plug & Play Scrum Team focused entirely on the agreed-upon goal and developed only the features necessary to achieve it. The team embraced self-management and remained independent from Sto. Decisions on functionality, technologies and architecture were made by the team, enabling them to deliver new versions and deliver user value quickly. All solutions were designed to be easily adaptable with minimal effort.

2. Genuine Teamwork: Members of the Plug & Play Scrum Team worked together using "Ensemble Programming." which reduced the effort of planning, coordination, documentation, and knowledge transfer between team members to a minimum. The integration effort, which is often high and complex when merging individual works, was minimized through this collaborative approach. Single Piece Flow and Continuous Delivery made it possible to quickly and frequently release new versions of a solution with high quality. The team was able to work on the essential features of the app most of its time.

3. Outcome-oriented use of Tools and Processes: The Plug & Play Scrum Team thoughtfully applied frameworks and practices such as Scrum, DevOps, and Evidence-Based Management, knowing all of these are just a means to an end, and the end is to create more business value sooner.

“In the team, you can tell that our discussions focus on goals and the solution, not on ourselves or our way of working. By creating a new Increment every day, for example, we see and know what we have actually accomplished on a daily basis. We don't need to discuss decisions for a long time because we can quickly validate and, if necessary, correct them.”

Thomas Schissler
a Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainer and a Developer in the Plug & Play Scrum Team

Results

From an initial idea, the Plug & Play Scrum Team developed the immediately deployable mobile app "Sto Online" within 6 weeks. By directly involving Sto and their customers in the development process, the app consistently aligns with their needs: Easy Access, Easy Order, and Informed Customer

Business Value

Within just six weeks, the app "Sto Online" was created, usable by all Sto customers. When Sto was showing an early version of the app to one of their customers to get their feedback on the app, the customer was initially skeptical about using yet another app. When he saw how the app made ordering of supplies so convenient and fast that they could even do it within seconds while doing work on the construction site, his feedback was: “When can I get this app? It saves me hours of time!”

Maximized ROI through User Focus

Early user testing allowed the Developers to focus on the most critical user needs, avoiding unnecessary costs and time losses.

“The mobile app makes the Sto online shop more visible to our target audience. With the offered features, we facilitate our customers' work. We will gradually and quickly expand the user base of the mobile app to continue learning together with our customers.”

Peter Dazer
Head of E-Commerce at Sto

Unlike other methods that lack transparency over costs, risks, value and progress in software projects, the working method of the Plug & Play Scrum Team created clear competitive advantages: Creating a usable and continuously improved product in every Sprint allowed for early generation of business value, maintaining control over the project at all times, and maximizing Return on Investment (ROI).

For Sto, the improvement of Customer Experience in the Sto online shop directly contributed to the strategic corporate goal of increasing the use of the online shop and strengthening online sales.

“The Plug & Play Scrum Team developed a deliverable product in just six weeks. During development, they tested the product with our customers, so we knew early on that we were developing the right product. What truly distinguished our collaboration was not only the speed and quality but also the evidence-based method of the team and the positive cultural change they created in our company. We learned a lot from this.”

Gürdal Ergüven
Chief Information Officer (CIO) at St

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