Accelerating Digital Transformation for a Global Real Estate Leader

Customer Challenge

A prominent US based real estate firm with $1.5 billion market cap and global workforce of 8,000 employees was grappling to keep pace with digital transformation.

🚩 Key Challenges:

• A rigid and slow-moving technology delivery process
• 40% of engineering efforts were duplicated causing significant delays and budget overruns
• This not only allowed budget overruns by 30% but also created high friction and low morale among teams

The Turning Point

Thumba was tasked to run a proof of concept. We scanned 155 user stories from one of their projects and leadership were confronted with startling reality:

📊 Critical Findings:

• 90% of user stories were found to have gaps, out of which 60% were critical
• 15% of user stories contradicted each other leading to high technical debt and unnecessary rework

The Solution

Recognizing the urgency to pivot based on the report, the company’s leadership partnered with Thumba to transform their software delivery pipeline. The focus was on proactive quality assurance and business analysis.

Thumba identified and allowed the BA teams to fix these gaps before a single line of code was written:

✅ Key Improvements:

• 45% of user stories were ambiguous and were re-written for clarity and aligning business and engineering teams
• 18% of user stories having duplicate requirements were flagged & fixed, capturing wasted efforts
• User Stories which were highly complex were broken down atomic user stories, saving 20% potential of technical debts

This proactive approach saved the real estate conglomerate approximately $65,000 and 80 hours of effort in less than five minutes, boosting sprint velocity and accelerating time-to-market.

The Outcome

By implementing Thumba, the company not only delivered their latest project on time and within budget but also restored trust and fostered a culture of collaboration across their leadership, business, and engineering teams.

The success of this engagement has paved the way for a broader partnership to further streamline operations and maintain their leadership position in the real estate domain.

Looking Ahead

Building on this success, the real estate leader continues its partnership with Thumba to:

🔮 Future Initiatives:

• Smart User Stories — BA can now identify gaps early > generate smart user stories + Acceptance Criteria with all fixes > generate test artefacts
• Context Setting — Users can now generate high quality User Stories and Test Cases by uploading PRD, FSD, HLD, Architecture doc, etc., to Thumba
• Test Automation — QA teams can now accelerate with test automation directly integrated with code repositories

End of Case Study