Reshaping teams and aligning to value streams with fast flow
From feature factory to customer-centric innovation: ABC Glofox's transformation journey
In the competitive world of fitness technology, ABC Fitness’ ABC Glofox, a studio and gym membership management software provider, faced a common challenge for innovative software companies: the risk of becoming a 'feature factory' while losing sight of their main objectives. This is the first in a series of articles exploring how ABC Glofox made the critical shift from feature-driven development to outcome-focused innovation.
We’ve teamed up with ABC Fitness to create a showcase on how they achieved success with fast flow, with analysis and tips on how you can apply these changes in your organization. You can read the full showcase here.
As ABC Glofox transitioned through various startup funding phases, they encountered a significant hurdle: rapid growth. The company knew they had to work as a team to ensure they could scale at pace without sacrificing quality.
Reshaping Teams and Aligning to Value Streams
ABC Glofox reshaped their teams and aligned them to value streams, using principles drawn from Team Topologies. This restructuring brought engineers much closer to customers and involved them earlier in the product development cycle.
Empowering Teams with Fast Flow
ABC Glofox made team empowerment part of their R&D mission. This meant bringing people from across functions into conversations much earlier on, creating a sense of there being 'one team,’ a philosophy shared throughout the ABC Fitness organization. Everyone started the process together, co-creating a shared understanding of the problem they were trying to solve for the customer.
Shifting Focus to Problems, Not Features
The company shifted the focus to problems rather than features, with a much clearer emphasis on user needs. This approach helped teams concentrate on driving business impact and customer outcomes, rather than delivering against a roadmap.
Providing Autonomy with Alignment
ABC Glofox gave teams more autonomy while fostering alignment across the organization. They did this by giving high visibility to their overarching mission, values, and guiding principles. These 'guardrails' made it easier to let go, allowing teams to become the unit of decision-making.
Co-creating Principles
As a result of these changes, the company's guiding principles evolved organically and were a product of co-creation, with different principles emerging from different areas of the business. This transformation led to significant improvements in product quality and customer satisfaction. ABC Glofox achieved success in delivering better outcomes for their customers and the business.
By giving teams autonomy within well-defined guardrails and fostering a culture of collaboration, ABC Glofox has positioned itself for sustainable growth and innovation in the competitive fitness technology market.
Fast flow success showcase: ABC Glofox
The showcase is in four sections, each offering a different perspective from different places in the organization, with reflection prompts allowing you to consider the opportunities for change in your context, and commentary from Conflux experts to help you relate the ABC Glofox approach to your own situation.
Conflux specializes in coaching, consulting, and larger programs of engagement around fast flow, and are perfectly placed to showcase your organization’s best practices.
If you are looking to demonstrate competence, communicate cultural change, or attract talent, get in touch with us today.
