Background

In late 2019, Plandek decided to switch from Ember.js to React.js. Rebuilding a core platform on a new tech stack is a significant decision, and the drivers of this change included:

• Customer needs

  They wanted to quickly adapt to changing customer needs as they grew
  
  

• Hiring

  They were having trouble finding Ember developers
  
  

• Velocity

  Feature delivery was slow, painful and expensive
  
  

Plandek provide businesses with end-to-end metrics and analytics. So, we thought they'd be a pretty great company for a case study.

Challenge

Feature delivery was slow in part because the tech stack was inflexible, which makes it less appealing for devs to work with; hiring was slow in part because fewer devs want to work with Ember.
All of this impacted Plandek's ability to swiftly adapt to changing customer needs.

When Plandek made the call to rebuild their platform in React.js, they faced another critical decision.

Should they:

• Hire a React contractor for 6 months or more (£60-80k) and hope that by the end their team will have learned React by osmosis;

• Upskill their current team in React so they can make the switch.

Reuben's Choice

Head of Engineering, Reuben Sutton, chose to upskill the team using Skiller Whale, opting for 1-hour coaching sessions every few weeks over 8 months.

"There's never a time I could reasonably block out a team for 3 days for classroom training. An hour of focused coaching once a fortnight is easy."

Reuben Sutton, VP of Engineering @ Plandek

Solution

Skiller Whale was chosen because it provides flexible live team coaching for dev teams, led by a language expert. By conducting a detailed assessment, Skiller Whale gets inside the brain of each developer, so they only attend the sessions they would benefit from.

The sessions are hands-on with an expert, so Plandek's devs learned by doing, writing code in their own environment.

1. Sessions are selected based on assessing each individual on the team.

2. Challenging code exercises are designed to stretch learners.3Every session is live, with an expert.

Metrics for impact

For the purposes of this case study, impact and gains from coaching were measured using the following data:

• Quantitative

  'Before' and 'After' metrics for the team's output (cycle time; delivery time)

  'Before' and 'After’ skills and knowledge assessment in React by Skiller Whale

  
  

• Qualitative

  Evaluation by the tech manager, reflecting on the team's coding competence before and after training

  Self-evaluation of learners on the impact of training on their skills

After Evaluations

The 'After' evaluations were done 3 months after coaching was completed in order to get a clear picture of the extent to which training has had lasting effects on the skills and competencies of the learners.

By looking at each of these measures of success, we aimed to build up a full picture of the impact of training on the team, as well as the company.

Results

Delivery time reduced by more than 75%

Comparing the period before Skiller Whale training (Oct'19-Jan'20), the delivery time (measured in days on the Y axis) for features, and also bug fixes, has decreased significantly.

Head of Engineering, Reuben, noted that he had actually expected a big increase in Delivery time from February - July as the team began to adopt React.js. Instead, he saw it steadily decrease as the team picked up React.js much quicker than he had expected. He also attributes the overall trend in decreased delivery time to the fact that Skiller Whale coaching improved the overall coding chops of the Plandek dev team.

Features are now built 4x faster

During the training period (Jan-Aug), we can see a trend towards shorter cycle times, so that if we compare average days from one year to the next, we see a reduction from over 45 days to just over 10 days.Cycle time tracks the time from when work starts on a unit of work to when the code is deployed. Comparing the period before Skiller Whale training (Oct'19-Jan'20), cycle time was higher than Plandek wanted it to be.Reuben also noted that the units of work at this time were relatively simple (expected to take 1-2 days), and were taking a lot longer. He illustrated this with an example:

"Last spring, we tried to add self-configuration into the platform. After 10 weeks, we were nowhere and I killed the project. After Skiller Whale coaching, the team did an equivalent project in 3 weeks - and it worked."

Indirect Business Impact

• Unlocked a huge talent pool and were able to hire in 1 week

• Significant financial savings

  
  

  As a result of a successful transition to React, Plandek has seen a huge positive impact on customers, and has been able to hire great people in less than a week, where previously they were trying (unsuccessfully) to hire for months. In evaluating the decision to use Skiller Whale, Head of Engineering, Reuben said:

"Skiller Whale has saved us many times what we’ve spent on them."