Background:
When the head of engineering at a top market intelligence firm sensed something was off with one of their teams, they knew they needed more than just a hunch to take action. The stakes were high, and only hard data could reveal if this team was truly underperforming—or if something deeper was at play. They needed answers fast, and manual reports couldn’t give them the answers they needed.
Challenge:
The company needed to verify whether the engineering team was truly underperforming. Identify the root cause — why were they so far behind the others? They needed to figure out how to course-correct quickly and get back on track. Normally, this type of analysis was almost impossible. A combination of manually pulling reports and building spreadsheets that not only took weeks, but were hard to trust because the data in their project management tool was notoriously outdated. These are the questions that needed to be answered:
“[A] team seems to get a lot of distracting support work across a lot of systems but lacks strategic focus. Any insight into the reality there is helpful”
“I’m trying to make the case that we need more support staff so not everything ends up with our senior 10yr developers that should be focused on strategic work”
“I’m really interested to know if there are any signals in the data about the relative productivity of [X] team members given what I’ve heard from multiple sources.”
“I need to ensure teams were focused on strategic work that enhances our capabilities and I don’t quantitatively know that’s true or not”
Solution:
They used Zenhub’s Engineering Investment Report to get to the root of the issue fast:
- An AI-powered tool that analyzes engineering activities directly from GitHub.
- Provides accurate, real-time data without the need for manual input.
- Automatically tags and categorizes work, ensuring reliable insights.
The Engineering Investment Report, provided an accurate, comprehensive overview of the team's work, eliminating the need for manual data gathering and analysis. The entire process, from data analysis to presenting the insights, happened in under one week.
Key Findings:
The report uncovered that:
- One engineer was doing a disproportionate amount of work, but it was low-value (e.g., bug fixes, administrative tasks).
- This happened to be the most senior engineer who was highly skilled and highly paid.
- Their skills were underutilized, contributing to the team's underperformance.
With these insights, the company was able to quickly course-correct and adjust the engineer’s workload, assigning him to more critical projects that matched his skill level.
Conclusion:
In just one week, Zenhub’s Engineering Investment Report helped this company identify and correct a critical misalignment in their engineering team, transforming an underperforming team by redirecting their top talent to where it was needed most.
If you’re ready to unlock insights and hidden potential to help drive your team’s success, contact Zenhub today to get your own Engineering Investment Report.
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