Klenty, a leading player in the sales enablement space, has consistently pushed the boundaries to empower sales teams worldwide. As a platform designed to streamline sales processes and enhance productivity, Klenty’s commitment to innovation and efficiency is unwavering. With a focus on delivering top-tier solutions to their customers, the engineering teams at Klenty were tasked with not only maintaining a high velocity but also enhancing their development processes. They needed deeper insights into optimizing their coding practices, reducing inefficiencies, and ensuring faster delivery of high-quality features without compromising on release cycles.

Key Challenges

In Q1 2024, Klenty’s engineering teams faced several critical challenges:

Strategic Actions Implemented

Leveraging Hivel’s insights from Git and Jira, Klenty’s engineering leadership took several strategic steps to address these challenges:

• Optimizing Cycle Time : Looking at data from Hivel the teams identified that large PRs were the root cause that was leading to delays in review and impacting overall cycle time. So, the teams focused on breaking down tasks into smaller, manageable units of under 400 lines of change and streamlining their processes. Hivel helped them identify the key repos, projects, and teams where delays were occurring, allowing for targeted improvements.
• Enhancing Review and Merge Efficiency : By setting clear guidelines and goals on Hivel for code reviews and utilizing automation, the teams could reduce the time spent on reviews and merges. Hivel’s PR Screen played a crucial role in monitoring these improvements.
• Reducing MTTR : By introducing better monitoring tools, reducing cycle time and refining incident management processes, the teams were able to respond to and resolve incidents more swiftly, reducing the MTTR.

Results Achieved in Q2 2024

The impact of these initiatives was evident by the end of Q2 2024 :

• Cycle Time Improvement : The average cycle time decreased by 25%, indicating faster delivery of features.

• Coding Time Reduction : A focused effort on committing in smaller chunks and enhancing CI/CD processes reduced coding time by 36%, contributing to overall efficiency.

• Review Time Reduction : Smaller commits became easier to review, and reviewers spent 22% lesser time reviewing PRs.

• Deployment Frequency, Commits and PRs increased : The team opened 35% more commits, 51% more PRs, and deployed 49% more, indicating higher productivity and more frequent releases.

• MTTR Improvement : The MTTR saw a dramatic reduction of 38%, reflecting faster incident resolution and improved overall stability.

Analysis

Problem

In Q1 2024, Klenty’s engineering teams struggled with long cycle times, slow review and merge processes, and delayed incident resolution. These issues caused bottlenecks in the development workflow, leading to extended time-to-market and decreased productivity. Additionally, large pull requests with over 400 lines of code complicated the review process, further slowing down progress. The engineering leaders partnered with Hivel to identify the exact causes of these inefficiencies, and make effective improvements.

Questions to Address :

• How can we reduce the high cycle time without compromising on the quality of our releases?
• What can be done to enhance the efficiency of our review process?
• How can we drastically reduce our MTTR to improve system reliability and user satisfaction?
• Is there a way to maintain or even increase deployment frequency while ensuring the quality of each deployment?

The Hivel Solution :

Klenty’s engineering leadership turned to Hivel to find answers to these pressing questions. Leveraging insights from Hivel’s integration with Git and Jira, they were able to take several strategic steps:

Optimizing Cycle Time

Hivel’s PR screen gave them visibility into the specific teams, PRs, and repos causing the delays. They narrowed in on these and focused on breaking down tasks into smaller, more manageable units of under 400 lines of code. This approach reduced the cycle time by 25% and made it easier for teams to push code to production faster.

Enhancing Review Efficiency

By setting goals on Hivel to track code reviews, having clear guidelines and utilizing automation tools, the teams maintained the same high rate of 97% PRs reviewed before merge, while reducing the time reviewers spent on reviews. Hivel’s PR and Process Screens were crucial in monitoring these improvements, leading to a 22% reduction in review time. Despite an increase in merge time by 66%, the teams identified this as an area needing further optimization, ensuring that future improvements could be made.

Increasing Throughput

By streamlining their processes and breaking down tasks into smaller, more manageable units, the team saw a 35% increase in commits, a 51% rise in open PRs, and a 49% boost in deployment frequency. These improvements led to higher productivity and allowed Klenty to release updates more frequently and reliably, without compromising on the quality of their work.

Reducing MTTR

Hivel helped Klenty track the hotfixes with the highest turnaround time, which prompted them to refine their incident management processes. This led to a dramatic 38% reduction in MTTR, significantly improving system reliability and user satisfaction.

Leadership Buy-in

Using data from Hivel, Klenty’s engineering leadership validated their decision to adjust release cycles and focus on improving code quality and throughput. The data-driven approach empowered the engineering managers to better manage sprints, reduce production bugs, and enhance the quality and quantity of shipped features.

Productivity Insights and Learnings:

For other companies facing similar challenges, Klenty’s experience offers several valuable lessons:

• Optimize Your Development Pipeline : Focus on the entire development pipeline—coding, review, and merge times. By breaking down tasks into smaller units and setting clear review guidelines, you can significantly reduce cycle time and improve overall efficiency.
• Manage Deployment Frequency and PR Size : Increasing deployment frequency without compromising quality is achievable by focusing on reducing the size of PRs and simplifying the review process. Smaller, more frequent releases can lead to more reliable software and happier users.
• Improve Incident Management : Reducing MTTR is crucial for maintaining system reliability and user satisfaction. Implementing better monitoring tools and refining your incident management processes can lead to faster resolutions and a more stable product.
• Leverage Data-Driven Decision Making : Analyzing your processes using tools like Hivel can provide critical insights that drive meaningful change. These insights can help secure leadership buy-in and ensure that your strategies align with your company’s goals.

Conclusion

By leveraging Hivel’s insights, Klenty’s engineering leaders made informed decisions that significantly improved productivity and process efficiency. The positive shift from Q1 to Q2 2024 demonstrates the crucial role Hivel played in driving continuous improvement. Klenty’s success highlights the transformative power of data-driven decision-making in engineering operations, emphasizing the importance of using data to identify challenges and implement targeted strategies, ultimately enhancing productivity and reducing time-to-market.

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