An overview of Flags (your SDLC drift assistant)

Cubyts is your AI Assistant for Proactive SDLC Governance, Cubyts integrates seamlessly with tools teams use (e.g. Jira, GitHub, Figma, Jenkins, etc.) to build their products; the platform enhances the development process with real-time insights, proactive flagging of potential issues, and data-driven decision-making, that ensures superlative Developer, Engineering and Execution excellence.

Flags is the drift assistant for the scrum team; flags discover 4 types of drifts in the system:

1. Process drift: Deviation from established processes causing Missed deadlines, Wasted effort, and Reduced team efficiency.

2. Technology drift: Technology and code quality drifts resulting in Increased debugging time, Delayed delivery, and Higher technical debt.

3. Compliance drift: Missed adherence to infosec, regulatory standards resulting in audit risks.

4. Feature drift (coming soon): Deviation from PRDs, User stories, Feedback resulting in Unplanned work, Delayed launches & Unrealized customer expectations.

The aforementioned drifts are surfaced as debts on the platform, the user can view the debts either by impact or by classification. The platform supports 4 types and 5 categories of Flags.

Flags by drift:

Process: Flags belonging to this type indicate process anomalies (followed by Teams during Agile execution) e.g. missing effort estimations in Jira stories, Effort overruns, Aging issues in Jira, etc. Resolution of these flags lead to improving the execution workflow.

Feature: Flags belonging to this type indicate indicate one or more of the following scenarios: 

1. Missing requirements: Represents a collection of flags that unearths builds that have missing requirements. These flags collectively help the Scrum team to ensure that the code introduced in the system is backed by requirements.
2. Quality of requirements: Represents a collection of flags that discovers the quality of requirements based on organization benchmarks. These flags collectively help the Scrum team to ensure that the code introduced in the system is backed by high quality requirements.
3. Unplanned builds for completed requirements. Represents a collection of flags that unearths requirements and designs that are completed and have no planned builds. These flags collectively ensure that the system represents the intent that may have to be considered for future builds.
4. Quality of planning: Represents a collection of flags that discovers the quality of planning (at the Engineer's level) based on organization benchmarks for different types of tasks executed by the engineer. These flags collectively ensure that the code is built well.
5. Drift in artefacts during the journey of software build: Represents a collection of flags that discovers the drifts between artifacts e.g. drift between user stories and PRD, Code and user stories, Feedback and PRD etc. These flags collectively ensure that the drift introduced during handoffs are discovered and fixed (as and when it happens).

Technology: Flags belonging to this type indicate impending technology bottlenecks during execution e.g. pending PR review, pending deployments/release, code smells, etc. Resolution of these flags lead to optimization of technology execution.

Flags by classification:

Feedback: Flags belonging to this category map to feedback coming from stakeholders (external stakeholders e.g. customers, internal stakeholders e.g. product managers, engineering leads).

Requirements: Flags belonging to this category map to requirement challenges either due to missing requirements or insufficient requirements/plan or changing requirements.

Code: Flags belonging to this category map to multi-dimensional impact on the code ranging from pending reviews or code smells or predictions associated with risk of bugs, code maintainability risks, etc.

Deployment & Release: Flags belonging to this category map to multi-dimensional impact on deployment (and therefore release) of code ranging from pending deployments or bugs since first deployment of PR in various landscapes or predictions associated with deployment risks, etc.

Effort: Flags belonging to this category map to effort of job done by team members ranging from missing effort estimates to extension of efforts/sprints leading to overloaded members in a sprint. 

Conclusion

Flags serve as a valuable drift assistant for Scrum teams, providing a comprehensive view of current and potential issues during execution across multiple dimensions. They help teams enhance the effectiveness of their rituals—such as daily stand-ups, retrospectives, and Scrum of Scrums—by enabling proactive issue resolution as work progresses.