Helping Gousto deliver at a larger scale.

Industry: Food Retail
How we helped: Technical & Organisational Assessment, Agile Coaching, Delivery System Design, Product Engineering

About Gousto

Gousto is a UK-based home delivery meal kit subscription business, they are the market leader in an increasingly competitive sector. Gousto supplies their subscribers with recipe kit boxes that include ready-measured, fresh ingredients and easily followed recipes using AI and automation to provide extensive choice and personalisation. They were founded in 2012 and shortly afterward their co-founders appeared on Dragon’s Den and have since raised over £500 million in funding.

The Challenge

Goustos growth was accelerated dramatically by the COVID pandemic. Unprecedented demand meant that Gousto had to respond quickly by scaling up its engineering teams in a very short space of time. The challenge was how to do that responsibly and sustainably, putting the right processes and structures in place. Accelerating the delivery of an ambitious product roadmap, that included the provision of 2 new factories – while maintaining business continuity and visibility to the rest of the organisation. Planning on this larger scale, and ways of working, were new to the growing Agile coaching function that was still forming. Engineering leadership at the team level was also proving hard to place due to the demand and scarcity in the talent market at the time.

The Solution

101 Ways started by placing a Principle Agile delivery consultant to work alongside the VP of Engineering and help shape the planning and governance process. While in parallel placing experienced Agile Coaches and Agile Delivery Managers across the tribes and squads – giving visibility to the areas that needed addressing most urgently as well as creating a framework for sustained growth while continuing to deliver on business continuity.

101 Ways also placed a number of key Senior Engineering consultants to help at the team/squad level on the day-to-day planning, prioritisation, and delivery of teams’ roadmaps. This was done by pairing with Gousto engineers, allowing them to ‘learn by doing’ while having the support of an experienced consultant who could later be moved to another team to repeat the process.

Outcomes

Gousto is now in a position to continue the journey of continuous improvement under its own steam. Having been part of the delivery of some major initiatives, 101 Ways are now confident that Gousto can achieve these types of deliverables without the same level of close support. This, coupled with improvements in team ways of working and established engineering team leadership, means Gousto can be confident of achieving both scale and sustainability.

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