Capability Building · EST. 2011 · APAC

A product launch timeline cut from months to weeks. eBay's team delivered to market ahead of schedule.

The Situation

eBay engaged ZXM with four weeks remaining before a product launch. The challenge was structural: the team’s development practices did not yet support the pace the launch required. Visual design had not been integrated into the software development and testing workflow, and translating design artefacts into a working backlog would normally take several months alone.

What the diagnostic found

Before any coaching began, ZXM read the team’s current operating state — how work was being passed between design and development, where handoff friction was highest, and what the team would need to sustain delivery discipline through to launch.

The primary finding: the team had no shared model of the product from the customer’s perspective, and no agreed mechanism for converting design intent into prioritised development work. Sprints were running, but without the structural foundations that make them effective under time pressure.

What changed

ZXM used Story Mapping to build a shared understanding of the product across design and development — structured from the perspective of eBay’s end users, with context and use cases made explicit. Within days, the team had a working Product Backlog.

Sprint cadence became the discipline mechanism: weekly Sprints with ZXM working alongside the Scrum Master and Product Owner, adjusting coordination practices in real time to keep delivery on track.

The Scrum Master was a deliberate focus. Knowledge transfer was embedded into every coaching session, so the capability to guide and sustain the team’s improvement did not leave with ZXM.

What held

eBay’s team delivered the product on time — four weeks from ZXM’s engagement, against a baseline process that took six months. Sprint discipline held under launch pressure.

The Scrum Master left the engagement with the capability to run this process independently, which is why the result compounded past the engagement itself.