How Agile Coaching Turned a Struggling B2B Team into a High‑Performance Squad

In October 2017 the author, an Alibaba agile coach, was invited to assist the Alibaba Health B2B development team, which was plagued by frequent release problems, high turnover, and severe burnout.

Background

The team’s first release in May failed to retain customers, and developers were exhausted after more than two months of 996 work.

Problem and Solution

After a detailed diagnosis, the coach introduced five key practices.

1. Build stable feature teams

Negotiated with functional managers so that at least 50% of each developer’s time was dedicated to the B2B product, creating continuity and ownership.

2. Align goals and make processes transparent

Used the internal Aone platform to expose real‑time progress and metrics, and clarified business objectives (e.g., reducing drug distribution layers from seven to three).

3. Open the scope lock and enforce quality

Introduced strict release criteria, pre‑release reviews, and regression test suites, raising the November release success rate to 50% and achieving 100% success in December.

4. Co‑create requirements

Formed cross‑functional requirement groups (business, product, one developer, one tester) to map user stories, prioritize features, and ensure shared understanding, which accelerated marketing‑driven feature delivery.

5. Visualize flow with Kanban

Implemented a Kanban board in the cloud‑efficiency tool, limited WIP per person, and used pull‑based prioritization to keep work steady and reduce context switching.

6. Implement continuous integration

Adopted CI pipelines, automated builds, unit tests, and integration tests, raising unit‑test coverage from 40% to 80% within two months and cutting build times.

7. Drive improvement with clear targets

Set measurable goals (e.g., 80% of demands tested within one week) and used PDCA cycles to continuously close the gap between current performance and targets.

By the end of 2018 the team achieved zero new production bugs, 85.7% of demands released within a week, and an average development cycle of six days, demonstrating the power of disciplined agile transformation.

In conclusion, the author likens agile improvement to medical treatment: systematic diagnosis, transparent feedback, patient‑centered solutions, and continuous care are essential for lasting health of software teams.