How Sano Genetics hit 90% sprint completion and transformed prioritization — with airfocus
Problem
Sano Genetics is a fast-paced startup with a growing product team challenged with competing priorities, disjointed tools, and the struggle to align cross-functional teams and roadmaps. A new SVP of Product & Delivery sought to streamline efforts and optimize communications.
Solution
By adopting airfocus, Sano Genetics provided a home for their product management team: a structured prioritization process, roadmap visibility, and feedback and insight management. It improved focus and delivery velocity – airfocus helped to streamline those builds – freeing up product leadership to focus on strategic planning.
Sano Genetics combines genetic testing, recruitment, and long-term engagement in one platform, accelerating enrollment and simplifying operations for precision medicine teams driving breakthroughs for patients. The fast-scaling company handles complex genetic and health data workflows with high security, compliance, and regulatory needs – all while rapidly scaling its small but powerful product organization.
The challenge: Prioritization chaos and overwhelming product demand
“We are in a typical startup space where the demand on our small product team far outweighs our ability to supply,” said Sarah Green Snider, SVP of Product & Delivery, Sano Genetics. “It’s a traditional opportunity-cost scenario where there are a hundred things we could do – and they're all probably right – but what's the single next best move?”
The product team faced multiple critical challenges:
Disjointed tools and legacy processes
“We had some internal tools, spreadsheets, and engineering ticketing systems, but they were not meeting our needs as we scaled.”
Overwhelming volume of competing priorities
“For a long time at Sano, the product function was a push and pull – we didn’t have defined releases. We were doing a lot, but without the necessary prioritization and focus. So for us, really focusing on something deeply, finishing the problem, moving on in a really clean way, and ensuring that we're making the the next best choice was really key."
Need for a more scalable model for collaborative decision-making
“Our product managers felt a lot of stress because they felt the burden of shifting priorities,” says Sarah. They needed a system that made decisions objectively. “We wanted to make it completely objective. We needed a tool to explain that while we can't possibly do more than our capacity line tells us, we do want the full team to weigh in.”
The solution: Structured prioritization and clarity with airfocus
Having used airfocus successfully in a prior role, Sarah recognized the impact a product management tool could make.
Priority Poker provided transparency
"I'm a big Priority Poker fan. I really believe in the merit of it because it creates transparency and it equalizes, and it gives you a data-driven way to get to your outcome,” says Sarah. "Everybody here loves it too, because we frame it as: 'Let's all get in a room and let's talk about what you need.' And two stakeholders hear each other directly. It creates a world where we are all communicating in a gamified way and in a positive way, and it changes the narrative so quickly. It makes it completely objective."
Roadmap visibility at every level
Sano Genetics built a fully visible strategic roadmap in airfocus to guide the company.
"We have a big strategic roadmap and then we have our quarterly release roadmap, and the quarterly release roadmap is run in Kanban. Everybody in the business has view access to it. And then we have a long-term strategic roadmap that we also run in airfocus… I actually have for myself and my own sanity a portfolio-level roadmap where I aggregate everything up and I see everything that's in play across our entire portfolio. airfocus has allowed me to do that…It's been a huge time saver and a huge enabler for us, and for me specifically."
Massive reduction of engineering waste
"One of our massive OKRs for the year was essentially to create an application that could be easily configurable such that we could decouple our engineering efforts from our day-to-day client needs. I think we've decreased our engineering efforts for client customizations and one-offs to under 5%, freeing them up to work on our long-term roadmap. It’s incredible."
Immediate scalability
"We'll be scaling quickly with more formalization of our different product streams, such as analytics and AI. So I'll be using airfocus to do a Scaled Agile delivery methodology. We'll have different pods and I'll use this as my aggregator in a more formal way," says Sarah.
Building team autonomy
"It's a great way for me to build autonomy with our product team. If the leadership team is setting vision, strategy and direction, and they're executing in the best way at the best time with the best product feature, that builds a lot of trust, autonomy, and scalability across our product function as well."
The results?
The impact can be seen in the data but, more than that, it’s allowed Sarah to move on from day-to-day management, and operate at a strategic level – it gave her time back. “When you enter a new place as a leader, part of your job is taking stock of what’s working and what’s not working, and finding new processes and efficiencies for the latter – airfocus let me tidy so quickly. Now we have a strategic roadmap that we're enacting in six months. It freed me up.”
airfocus’ impact, in numbers:
Improved delivery velocity:
“We’ve hit over 90% of our sprint goals over the last two quarters.”
Significantly reduced the number of change sprints:
Their engineering team can now spend less time on customizations, one-offs, client delivery because their product is doing the work – and they can focus on longer-term work. “We’ve decreased our engineering efforts on a major platform initiative to under 5%.”
Time saved across the board:
“It's been a huge time saver and a huge enabler for us and saved hours a month for me specifically. It's given us a lot of clarity and a lot of focus.”
Why airfocus over competitors?
“I think airfocus actually stands out because it’s a real product tool for real product people,” said Sarah. “I particularly love Priority Poker – that’s the key for me. It fixes communication problems instantly. It turns a negative product challenge into something fun, positive, and collaborative. There’s so much magic in that.”
What would Sarah say to other product leaders? “For a lot of software people, the entire job is developing products that create efficiency. It stands to reason that there are also product tools that give you the same efficiency so you can focus on actually building the market efficiency that you're after. There's no reason to fight your internal tools or processes. The time really should be freed up to think deeply – with customers, your end user, board, and important stakeholders – about the best way to deliver value. Your product management tools should be working for you the same way that your product is supposed to be working for somebody else."
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