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LS Retail | 16 November 2015

“We cut delivery time by 99%”

“We cut delivery time by 99%”

This is the second part of the interview with Gudrun Olafsdottir, Development Director for LS Nav. Last week we found out the secret behind LS Nav: continuous delivery of updates. This week, Gudrun Olafsdottir gives us the cold hard numbers, and allows us to take a peek into the future of LS Nav.

99% improvement in delivery time

Can you give us some examples of the improvements you have experienced?

“All the hard work was worth it: the automation alone has saved us huge amounts of time. Since taking the jump, the team has experienced tremendous results. The final part of our process, the one involving testing the product, documenting it and packing it, used to be very time-consuming. Since we automated it, we have managed to cut the delivery time by 100%: what used to take a group of 20 developers 2 months to accomplish, is now done in virtually no time. Before changing our approach, it would to take a 5-person team 2 to 4 weeks to do the North-American localization for a new release. Since implementing automated testing and lean thinking this has become a one-person’s job, and it takes just a day - this means we have managed to decrease localization time by 99%! Since building our own development tool we are not only quicker to release, but also enjoy total control over our code – which is unique in the NAV environment.”

The road to an agile future

What are the LS Nav teams’ plans for the future?

“We will release LS Nav on Dynamics NAV 2016 later in November. We are very excited about this upcoming release and about working with the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV. There are many really cool new functionalities and features within standard NAV. Tools such as Events and Extensions, which were introduced with Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016, will help us make upgrades even quicker and easier for customers.”

How does your team apply the agile methodology, day to day?

Being agile means constant commitment to simplifying the road. This does not mean that we will be delivering fewer functionalities. What we aim at is a product that is even simpler and faster to implement, learn and use: intuitive user interfaces, quick and easy installations. Our biggest goal at the moment is to manage to keep all our customers always up to date with the latest technology. We are currently working on a new project, temporarily called “LS Appstore”, where partners can sign up customers for automatic updates. The service will then push out updates and apply them automatically. In the future, updating LS Nav will be as easy as updating as an app on your smartphone.”

You have been working hard to share your knowledge with the LS Retail Partner Network. Is this one of your priorities?

“We have been doing continuous delivery workshops with our partners for the past few months. We feel it’s very important to share our expertise and get our partners on board with our new way of operating. We believe that we will be completely lean only once our whole delivery chain is.”  

Discover what will be new in LS Nav 2016

If you are interested in knowing more about upcoming continuous delivery workshops, or would like to experience the same improvement the LS Nav team went through, do not hesitate to contact us.

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