2021 All stacked up with Allstacks’ CEO, Hersh Tapadia

The team at Allstacks continues to champion our belief that the software leaders and companies that succeed prioritize building trust within their organizations by confidently delivering on their commitments to the business and we wanted to highlight some of our progress to that goal. 

2021 brought a lot of twists and turns, grief and joy, and while we got to experience a brief window of what a return to our “old” normal could look like, we quickly discovered that we wouldn’t be going back. Instead, it’s time to shape and define our “new normal.” So, we got to work helping our customers get aligned on what their engineering organizations would look like in the new world so they, and we, can continue to deliver on our promise to connect our engineering outcomes to the business value they create.

Work is now centered around a global, hybrid workforce in companies of all shapes and sizes —and most of those companies' business involves shipping software as a critical driver of their businesses. This dynamic creates even more demand for better visibility into engineering and progress against commitments to the business. Visibility is the key to building trust in the software organization by fostering better alignment and enabling communication between engineering and stakeholders. And when alignment happens, you can be proactive in responding to risks and begin the journey of more predictable software delivery.

This growth is evident as we look across the thousands of conversations we’ve had with engineering and product leaders, analysts, investors, and customers this year. While we see new ideas entering the space, offering different ways of solving these challenges, all are united by the common cause of a better operating technology organization. It’s no longer an option to continue to build software the way we have for 30+ years. If 2021 (and 2020) have taught us anything, it is to adapt, not look to go back to the way things were, but to actively shape the future we want to create. Engineering and product teams are charged with adapting and improving their contribution to the business — they are now eager for it.

As we excitedly look forward to 2022, we’re taking a moment to acknowledge the milestones attained and celebrate the wins with our organization over the last year. Here’s how all the hard work and dedication to our customers stacked up in 2021.

our growth at-a-glance

• 3X new customers
• 107% team growth
• 291371 new lines of code 
• 19 strategic features shipped 
• Lots of recognition in the market...

Click here to read our reviews on G2

In 2021 we...

• Disrupted a market category
• Got a meaningful makeover
• Learned about the state of software development
• Identified 4 areas for growth for engineering in 2022

(click to jump to section) 

We disrupted a market category

When we first started, Allstacks quickly proved itself a powerful tool for mining insights and bringing data visibility to product and engineering teams. As we’ve grown, we’ve realized that the platform is not just for improving decisions, processes, and relationships within the technology organization — it has applications across the entire business and value streams. 

While Value Stream Management (VSM) has long been desired across organizations to drive alignment and value creation, to date the dream has largely been unrealized. Historically, it has taken a long time, and a lot of change management, to develop and implement the required tools, teams, and processes and unnaturally string them together. These changes also often became an “all or nothing” affair, and frequently years of work were lost when the process was disrupted, often due to externalities. Ironically, a very waterfall approach. Organizations can not afford to embark on these lengthy, complex VSM implementation and change management processes so Allstacks developed a better, more intelligent way to understand and impact value streams without needing process or behavior changes. 

We call this Value Stream Intelligence. 

By aggregating disparate data sources to generate insights, delivered via a single source of truth that everyone in the business can understand, Allstacks has grown into the boardroom’s best friend by helping them understand the impact of their most important function, engineering. It’s equally valuable to every leader from every department seated at the strategic table.  

“Value Stream intelligence builds trust, improves reliability, and delivers value. When things are more predictable, outcomes flourish. Rather than looking into the rearview mirror, software companies need to proactively de-risk their outcomes.” –Adam Dahlgren, SVP of Product 

3 capabilities shipped in 2021 that support Value Stream Intelligence

1. Engineering Performance Industry Benchmarks - Access the benchmarks here 
2. Expanded data sets and flexibility to power more personalized and complex reports. Learn more
3. Enhanced Forecasting capabilities to provide a more accurate estimate of project delivery timelines - Learn more about forecasting software delivery

We got a meaningful makeover

In a strategic and creative process that called for collaboration across teams, Allstacks redefined its brand DNA to better reflect the broader value of the platform, the boldness of our customers, and our vision for the future. Much of this was modernizing our external brand identity, but it also involved codifying our point of view and internal values, as well as giving the Allstacks application a UX/UI overhaul that signaled the shift into evolving personas and use cases. 

We learned a lot about the state of Software Development

As a team, as a business, and as a community of humans, we really went through it in 2021 – and we came out with some bumps and bruises. Still, I’d say we ultimately came out on top with a better sense of capacity, balance, and opportunity. With the help of the Allstacks platform, we released a couple of significant datasets and analysis that gives us a sense of the state of software development through it all.

• We published a study on hybrid and remote models as we observed the impact of COVID on workplaces. 
• We launched the first-ever, real-time Engineering Performance Industry Benchmark Dashboard that offers a live look at the last 12-months of data for engineering teams to give organizations an objective measure in which to assess their performance and set goals. (Check it out, anyone can use it even if they aren’t, yet, a customer!)

Generally, what we found, both internally within our team and externally across our entire dataset, was that after a short normalization period (about 3 weeks) productivity returned to previous norms. A deeper investigation found that developers were often more able to do "deep work" due to less distraction and were leveraging their usual commuting time to create more work-life balance. 

When interest in returning to the office re-emerged over the summer, our customers were able to leverage their Allstacks reporting to advocate for continued remote work or a hybrid model, given the benefits to employee happiness and retention were very strong with no detriment to productivity. It also allowed us to support our teams when the state of the world dictated for us sudden shifts.  

Ultimately, we found that the combination of hybrid work with a platform like Allstacks enables organizations to manage their outcomes while enabling the best work-life balance for their teams.

Allstacks found useful and powerful insights for engineering leaders through our new Engineering Performance Industry Benchmarks dashboard. These insights give the industry the first set of industry data to use as a yardstick for their own engineering performance, answering "what does good look like?" For instance, we learned that bugs took 19.4% longer to resolve over the last twelve months while the average commit size for organizations rose by 6.7%, although coding days dropped by 5.8%.

we identified 4 areas for growth for engineering in 2022

At the highest level, Allstacks' value lies in improving Value Stream Intelligence through strengthening relationships and making sense of data. Over the last year, we identified four common threads that came up in every conversation with technology leaders related to their goals using Allstacks. 

1. Align engineering outcomes to business goals.
2. Detect risk and reliably forecast delivery. 
3. Benchmark and improve team effectiveness.
4. Build trust and confidence in the software organization.

Each of these value drivers is steeped in everything we do and plan on building in 2022. We’re looking toward the future with tons of excitement and confidence around bringing these goals to life. 

2021 (and 2020) brought a sudden and abrupt shift in our world and our ways of life. In many ways, it accelerated the trends bubbling under the surface. As a community, we began to commit to hybrid work. We found new and deliberate ways to communicate, manage and respect expectations and deliver on our commitments to stakeholders.

At Allstacks, we are committed to making it easy to hit your goals and make your teams AND stakeholders successful. We’re thrilled to be working with an incredible, talented, and diverse set of customers and partners, each impacting and improving the world in their unique ways. We’re backed by a tremendously talented team here at Allstacks, without whom our success wouldn’t be possible, and we can’t wait to show you what 2022 will bring.