Building an elite software developer team with Pluralsight Flow
The Challenge
Becoming a tech-focused company that values engineers and prioritizes data-driven decisions
KAR Global is on a mission to become a more agile company that leverages the most innovative technology and skilled engineers to deliver the best wholesale experiences for their customers. KAR is focused on developing and delivering on what their clients want and empowering teams to be autonomous while still leading effectively.
“Our goal at KAR Global is to build world class product development teams. We can now hone in on areas for improvement quickly, while identifying top performers for leadership opportunities within the company,” says Tim Adrian, Senior Vice President of Product Development.
In order to accomplish this, KAR Global needed to pivot towards a data-focused approach to managing their teams, discover and tackle bottlenecks and create a more efficient workflow so they can focus on the metrics and challenges that matter most.
Who they are
KAR Global, a Fortune 1000 company, makes wholesale easy for their customers so they can be more successful. KAR Global’s end-to-end platform serves the remarketing needs of the world’s largest OEMs, dealers, fleet operators, rental companies and financial institutions.
Kar Global by the numbers
Headquartered in Carmel, Indiana
KAR has 10,000 employees
KAR maintains business across 75 countries
How Flow has impacted the way KAR approaches new innovations and demands
“Flow reinforces the way we hire. People are the most important part of us getting our jobs done and moving digital transformation forward.”
Brandon Etchison, Director of Platform Engineering, KAR Global
The Solution
Build "championship" teams using Pluralsight Flow to gamify team development and identify high-performer key traits
For Tim Adrian, Senior Vice President of Product Development, KAR’s crucial first step in driving this key initiative is creating a culture of excellence:
“We strive to maintain an environment where all of our employees at all levels can thrive. Not just be successful, but absolutely thrive. That means empowering them with the tools, the resources, the training and the leadership necessary for them to be successful in their roles today and prepare them for their desired roles tomorrow.”
To help reinforce their pursuit of excellence and continuous improvement, KAR partnered with Pluralsight and adopted Flow, an engineering analytics platform. With Flow delivering continuous information about where teams are performing well and identifying potential roadblocks, KAR could leverage concrete data to back up their journey to becoming a world-class team and attracting and retaining top talent.
“Overall, our team welcomes it [Flow]. It’s contributed to thoughtful conversations and meaningful one-on-ones with both employees and managers. And when we talk about retrospectives and some of the ceremonies that we have as a part of Agile, we bring that data into the conversation to provoke better conversations on continuous improvement,” says Shawn Humphries, Vice President of Product Development.
The key benefits of Pluralsight for KAR Global
Efficient onboarding practices
Improved insights into team progression, who would be the best fit for the team and if new hires are onboarding effectively.
Culture of trust and empowerment
Created a culture that encourages continuous improvement and trust for engineering to make high-level decisions
Maximizing performance
KAR has better visibility into how the team is performing and how to best utilize those team members, resulting in a 12% increase in coding days and a 28% increase in code commits per day.
Continuous measurable improvement
KAR can better track what commitments to projects have been made in the past and in the future, making it easier to predict what can be delivered in upcoming quarters.
What Flow insights have become the most valuable to KAR
"Flow has enabled us to find and groom our team members as well as find spots within the teams where we can improve."
Tim Adrian, Senior Vice President of Product Development, KAR Global
The results
Becoming an award-winning company with a transparent workflow and modernized onboarding process
With Pluralsight Flow, KAR Global now has visibility into when engagement drops or when reworks are necessary, which has allowed leaders to use hard data to realign teams to the needs of customers.
“The Flow tool really helps them measure that output and throughput,” says Tim Adrian, “and also helps us have some good coaching sessions with them on what we should be doing, what we should not be doing. From a team perspective, it helps us gamify product development and allows teams to see how they’re doing against other teams within KAR.”
They’ve also been able to use data to increase KAR’s retention, prove the value of engineering teams, build a culture of excellence and provide a big-picture story for leadership and employees.
Flow is the most comprehensive developer metrics tool that I’ve ever worked with. It’s not just lines of code, it’s not all these historical, traditional tools—it’s such a great, comprehensive tool,” says Brandon Etchison, Director of Platform Engineering.
These great efforts have resulted in KAR Global winning a Best in Tech award for “Best transformation through data.” When asked what this victory means for KAR, Shawn Humphries said, “To be awarded Best in Tech means a lot to me. We’ve kind of soaked our soul into the last four years reinventing our teams, doing a lot of hiring and building a lot of great products that have made a difference for KAR and ADESA.”
How Flow has helped quantify teams' productivity
"It’s one data point that we use to really ensure we're driving business value and are aligned with what the business is requesting."
Tim Adrian, Senior Vice President of Product Development, KAR Global