About KFC UK & Ireland
KFC is a global chicken restaurant brand with a rich, decades-long history of success and innovation. It all started with one cook, Colonel Harland Sanders, who created a finger lickin’ good recipe more than 75 years ago—a list of 11 secret herbs and spices scratched out on the back of his kitchen door.
Benjamin Richards and his role at KFC UK & Ireland
Ben serves as a Systems Coach at KFC UK & Ireland, where his primary focus is aligning teams and individuals to drive greater efficiency while reducing waste across the organization. In his role, Ben oversees the Agile Guild, supporting and fostering change across different business functions.
His responsibilities extend beyond just delivery; he invests in building cohesive teams and fostering a culture of continuous improvement. Ben has been a user of the Atlassian suite of tools for 10+ years.
Background
KFC UK&I has been using ActionableAgile™️ Analytics in Jira for four years - since 2019. 55 Degrees is proud to witness over 4 years of growth alongside KFC UK&I.
The Situation
KFC UK&I wanted to prioritise quick and consistent delivery of value to customers whilst understanding the health of their products. To level up the business, they began to embark on a journey of continuous improvement with the aim of becoming more predictable and having more meaningful conversations internally about how they work to meet their goals and drive meaningful outcomes.
Enhancing Efficiency and Reducing Errors
To improve, KFC UK&I needed to reduce the administrative burden of, and impact of human errors in, maintaining large spreadsheets for tracking team and product health metrics.
Automating data to drive decision-making became an intriguing direction for the team.
"There was the admin overhead of, as well as the human error within, the spreadsheets and additional data you are trying to work with. There was a lack of standardisation and continuity"
Advancing Towards Standardised Processes
A lack of standardisation and continuity in data analysis processes made it difficult to get a consistent and accurate view of team and product health. It was clear that this created barriers to communicating data and language across teams.
Facilitating Seamless Data Exchange and Contextual Understanding:
Sharing data and insights between teams and stakeholders was challenging, leading to inefficiencies and misinterpretation. There was an incomplete bigger picture between the teams thanks to data silos and standardisation.
"The spreadsheet that I was operating from was easy for me, because I'd gone through the pain of curating and creating it. However, maintaining at scale and taking others on the journey to take ownership a struggle, and rightly so."
The Solution: ActionableAgile™️ Analytics
When KFC UK&I decided to move toward a data-driven and automated approach to agility, it was important that they were able to use their existing data in Jira. ActionableAgile™️ Analytics for Jira was ideal, because users don’t have to leave Jira, and because the data in Jira stayed safely in Jira at all times.
Once starting with ActionableAgile™️ Analytics, KFC UK&I saved time from the very start by avoiding manual spreadsheets and loading their existing historical data directly from Jira in minutes (or less). There was no more waiting - discussions could start immediately!
"With ActionableAgile™️ Analytics we could work with data at its source and leverage our existing system (Jira) - with ease.
Being able to define data, manipulate it, and assess different time periods - that was a massive win."
Overcoming Data Silos and Misinterpretation
For KFC UK&I, the team can now center conversations around work items and business goals. The teams are able to view the same data and trust in its integrity. This shift promotes a true team mentality, focusing not only on execution, but also on intentional collaboration and alignment with business objectives.
This aspect, often overlooked in many companies, is now a focal point for KFC UK&I, enhancing overall team effectiveness and cohesion.
"It’s great to see the recent releases [to ActionableAgile™️ Analytics], such as the ability to share datasets. Even though I am not in the weeds of the day-to-day [in teams], I can still at least sing from the same hymn sheet that the scrum masters are working from, rather than second-guessing the data filtering."
Actionable data to paint a bigger picture
Data should serve a purpose and, above all, be actionable. If you stop at consuming a chart, you are robbing yourself of huge rewards. The big win is using this data to have the right conversations at the right times, so you can take the right actions and make the right decisions.
That is why, across all teams, at least once a quarter, the Agile Guild team at KFC UK&I will now take a snapshot of data from ActionableAgile™️ Analytics and complement with narration and context around that data.
This ensures everyone knows how the data is being interpreted, sees the context that goes into that interpretation, and allows deeper discussion among everyone who consumes it.
"We might see a 5% decrease in throughput - okay, well, that is a number. But actually, the context applied brings the meaning and driving action.
We are able to take data and have meaningful conversations as a collective. We tried x and saw y improvement – in doing so we look to standardise, consolidate, and normalise practices if there is a shared consensus that there is value and benefit from it."
Supporting real conversations with stakeholders
By providing accurate and transparent data, ActionableAgile™️ Analytics has built greater trust among team members and stakeholders in the insights derived from the data.
There has been an enhanced ability to have meaningful, data-backed conversations with business partners and stakeholders, aligning them to the value stream and helping ensure everyone is on the same page.
An example of this can be seen during a recent quarterly review process meeting, where the team presented data with context in the following areas:
Arrival Rate vs. Throughput '24 – Using ActionableAgile™️ Analytics, the team demonstrated that 36% more work had entered the backlog over the quarter. It's encouraging that, alongside this increase, throughput also rose by 16%, meaning work is flowing smoothly through the team, and they are managing the higher demand without causing significant backlogs. However, this will be something to monitor closely going forward.
Cycle Time – ActionableAgile™️ Analytics highlighted that the team’s cycle time had increased by 27% during the quarter. While this could be alarming to stakeholders without context, the team was able to explain that the increase was due to external factors, such as a recent code freeze and reduction of team
"A big takeaway is being able to support meaningful conversation with our business partners [Stakeholders], that align to the value stream(s). Having an elevated level of trust in the data of how we operate to support outcomes is a must have."
Continuous improvement using data
With one of the main drivers being continuous improvement, KFC UK&I run a quarterly Kaizen (that’s Japanese for improvement) event through a two-week sprint focused on identifying problems and fostering innovation throughout the business. ActionableAgile™️ Analytics has provided supporting data used during this period and daily throughout team level Kaizen.
Results by the numbers
Having implemented ActionableAgile™️ Analytics some years ago we took a look back at how KFC UK&I has progressed on their journey over the last 2-3 years.
Let’s look into how some numbers are around their Product Value Stream goals. Has KFC UK&I been able to cut down on down time while being more efficient, predictable and deliver more?
Overall Average Flow Efficiency: This is the time work is actively being worked on, as opposed to waiting or being idle.
2021: 69.5%
2024: 77.6% (+7.95%)
Overall Cycle Time: Cycle time is a key performance metric, reflecting how quickly work moves through the system. Shorter cycle times indicate efficiency in delivering work.
2021: 9.3 days
2024: 6.3 days (-3 days)
What assumptions can we make from this?
The increase in Flow Efficiency (+7.95%) suggests that KFC UK&I has significantly reduced idle time in their product value stream, indicating an improvement in how quickly work is prioritised and completed.
Furthermore, the reduction in Cycle Time by 3 days reflects that they are not only working faster but also have become more efficient at delivering value to their customers. These metrics strongly imply that KFC UK&I has optimized their process flows, minimized bottlenecks, and improved predictability, positioning themselves for sustainable, scalable delivery.
Summary of Outcomes
Automated data analysis, reducing manual errors and administrative burden.
A standardized approach to tracking and analyzing metrics, ensuring consistency and reliability. AKA - a data source they can trust.
Common data and language that teams can bring to regular Kaizen periods.
Implementation of automation to identify and address aging work in progress, signaling and enforcing the cleaning of the backlog.
What does the future look like for KFC UK&I?
Finding their flow
Having started with Scrum, Scrumban, and Kanban at the core of their agility, KFC UK&I has transitioned into a product-centered style of working, leading the teams to lean methods and applications to support flow and the associated flow metrics to help tell the tale.
To support this transition, KFC UK&I has also begun using Jira Product Discovery alongside ActionableAgile™️ Analytics because these tools offer flexibility for strategic initiatives and prioritisation.
"Over the last two to three years, we have been on a journey of stepping it up a gear in terms of driving and moving away from projects, and stepping into a product-oriented structure.
We have focused on forming value streams, and with this, a greater view of how we find flow in our product teams and overall alignment, to deliver value to our customers."
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