In our ongoing Employee Spotlight series, we celebrate the achievements of our team members who are making a significant impact. Today, we shine a light on Pratyaksh Mangal's remarkable journey and his pivotal role in driving cross-functional delivery excellence and transforming software development processes for our client.

Pratyaksh, a Senior Consultant at Greyamp, specialises in guiding organisations through complex changes and achieving desired outcomes. With extensive experience in agile methodologies, process improvement, and change management, he works with client teams to identify areas for improvement and implement tailored solutions. In his previous role as a Product Manager leading cross-functional teams at an India-based FinTech organization, he honed his expertise in product team operations, which he now leverages in his role as a Transformation Consultant.

Here's a Q&A with Pratyaksh regarding one of his recent client engagements.

Q: What was the client engagement about?

Pratyaksh: Working with one of the largest NBFC in the country, the project aimed to enhance the cross-cutting, end-to-end value of their software delivery processes. The key objectives were to enable delivery rigor for on-time delivery, drive reliability and resilience, and bring visibility on the progress of how the value is getting built and delivered on ground. Our focus was on streamlining processes, improving transparency, standardising tracking mechanism, and fostering collaboration to ensure timely, reliable, and resilient delivery of value.

Q: Can you summarize the issues you worked on & the solutions you implemented to address them?

Pratyaksh: We identified several pain points in the client’s software delivery process through a discovery workshop attended by all digital leads. I was involved in resolving the following set of issues:

• Engineering teams mirrored business silos rather working together on a journey as business domains, which hindered cross-functional collaboration.
• Due to unclear accountability and ownership within teams, there were operational inefficiencies.
• Teams working independently had limited awareness of competing priorities, which sometimes delayed value delivery.

These factors collectively impacted process consistency, workflow progression, dependency management, and overall solution delivery.

Solutions:  I played a role in setting up the standardized Jira structure and enabling teams on agile methodologies. By implementing these changes, we significantly improved collaboration and efficiency across cross-functional teams. My contributions focused on defining clear workflows, standardizing issue types, and establishing sprint cadences which included planning, grooming, retro and scrum of scrums. This enabled us to foster a culture of continuous improvement and adaptability, ultimately delivering impactful results aligned with business goals.

Q: What were your key learnings from this engagement?

Pratyaksh: From this engagement, I learned the significance of Conway's Law: organizations tend to design systems reflective of their internal communication structures. This insight helped explain why the client's engineering teams, set up around business silos instead of domains or capabilities, had trouble working together across functions and delivering value efficiently. It showed why our work to reshape teams and bring in standard agile methods was so important.

Q: What was your biggest challenge? What did you do to overcome it?

Pratyaksh: The challenging part of the project was managing siloed development among dependent teams. To address this, I implemented a Scrum of Scrums (SoS) cadence. This involved setting up regular meetings where representatives from each team gathered to discuss dependencies, synchronize efforts, and resolve issues collaboratively. By fostering transparency and alignment across teams, the SoS cadence facilitated smoother coordination, enhanced communication, and ultimately improved the overall efficiency and effectiveness of our development process.

Q: If there is one thing you could do differently, what would it be?

Pratyaksh: In hindsight, I would have emphasized earlier and more continuous engagement with stakeholders from all affected business units. This could have helped us reduce resistance to cross-functional teams, identify roadblocks earlier, and facilitate the standardization of Jira structures and agile methodologies across the organization, potentially improving  completion rates even faster.

Q: What was the biggest highlight from this experience?

Pratyaksh: At Greyamp, we believe in creating impact. The highlight of my experience was the tangible impact my work created, as can be seen in these key metrics:

• 30% of work done in a sprint getting UAT sign-off at story level, enabling early feedback and continuous value delivery
• Established comprehensive JIRA visibility across all domains, leading to a standard view of reporting across the organisation
• Increased sprint completion rate from 35% to 65% for the lighthouse initiative in a month’s time

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