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In response to economic distress posed by COVID-19, countries around the world have updated their value-added tax (VAT) rates to ease the burden on their citizens. The high volume and accelerated rate of changes required a much faster and more efficient response than ever before. Fortunately, Microsoft Digital was able to use a familiar solution in a unique way—Microsoft Azure DevOps for managing VAT changes.
“The volume of changes required within such a condensed period of time was unprecedented,” says Paddy Colreavy, a senior program manager with Microsoft Digital, the organization that powers, protects, and transforms Microsoft. “With COVID-19, a lot of governments have come forward to help businesses with temporary VAT rate reductions.”
Getting it wrong means we can’t invoice customers correctly. Azure DevOps gives us the ability to manage numerous projects at once.
– Paddy Colreavy, senior program manager, Microsoft Digital
With Microsoft’s multiple lines of business and global sales footprint, a change in VAT rates, which are taxes attached to general goods and services in many countries outside the US, means several updates have to be managed in parallel.
Deploying these changes requires systems to be reconfigured, which has to be done prior to the new VAT rate taking effect, otherwise pricing will be inaccurate.
“Getting it wrong means we can’t invoice customers correctly,” Colreavy says. “Azure DevOps gives us the ability to manage numerous projects at once.”
[Learn how Microsoft is transforming modern engineering practices with Azure DevOps. Discover how Microsoft operations evolved with Azure DevOps.]
Keeping up with a rapidly changing VAT environment
Historically, Microsoft Azure DevOps has been used to capacity plan new features and system health updates with greater lead times.
“We manage all of our work through Azure DevOps,” says Maeve Tait, a senior engineering manager with Microsoft Digital. “The beauty is that I can see everything from one page. If something urgent comes in, I can look at capacity and assign appropriately.”
Prior to COVID-19, engineering teams would chart out iteration paths across six-month semesters, splitting their time between growing and maintaining systems.
Weekly and daily scrums between teams allow the groups to identify how and where changes will take place and plan efforts accordingly. But after COVID-19, the old way of identifying and coordinating system changes couldn’t keep up with demand. The cadence of changes outpaced the ability to plan.
“Given the volume of change over the past year, it just wasn’t possible to spend the time on project management and status meetings that we would have historically,” Colreavy says.
In certain cases, Microsoft Digital would only have a few weeks to become compliant with a new regulation.
Ripples felt downstream
“Once we’re notified of a VAT change for a country, the trickle-down effect to engineering and other dependent teams needs to be defined so that changes can be delivered together,” Colreavy says. “One change can involve multiple teams.”
Engineering teams across Microsoft Digital rely on strong communications and capacity planning to coordinate efforts. This is especially true for global VAT teams throughout Microsoft, who need to sync up efforts to make sure all systems are compliant by a certain date.
With several engineering teams involved in any regulatory update, multiple dependencies are affected by any change.
“All these changes have to be made on different data points,” says Raghavender Anegouni, a senior software engineering manager with Microsoft Digital who is responsible for downstream changes. “There are hierarchical sets of changes within these systems so that we apply the right VAT rates.”
But Microsoft Digital recognized that a solution was already available. Using Microsoft Azure DevOps for managing VAT changes allowed Microsoft Digital to track which teams were affected by a change and the status of any project.
This was a new way to use Microsoft Azure DevOps.
“If we’re doing something like a VAT change, that’ll impact a number of groups,” Tait says. “We can create dependent features for those teams. Based on that, we can escalate and develop an overall strategy.”
Colreavy agrees.
“It was really clear that we could identify the right people, like the owners for certain activities,” Colreavy says. “People could apply a status and raise any issues in the tool.”
By tracking relationships and statuses in Microsoft Azure DevOps, Microsoft Digital was able to improve communications and build traceability into workflows, mitigating communication risks and introducing new efficiencies.
Leadership wants us to focus on code, not project management. Azure DevOps has helped immensely.
– Raghavender Anegouni, senior software engineering manager, Microsoft Digital
“Two years ago, we were logging each individual feature and implementing through Azure DevOps,” Anegouni says. “We have a lot of access to rich data in Azure DevOps compared to how we were using it in the past, including an end-to-end view of how each project is doing. Today, if there is a risk carried with a change, we are much more confident because we have data as a primary driver.”
Boosting tax compliance with Microsoft Azure DevOps
Transforming the way Microsoft Digital uses Microsoft Azure DevOps for VAT compliance has allowed engineers to focus on code quality rather than management.
“If I’ve missed an email, I don’t have to email 10 people to update my status,” Anegouni says. “Leadership wants us to focus on code, not project management. Azure DevOps has helped immensely.”
Microsoft Digital now has real-time visibility into the interconnected and dependent systems. Status updates can be clearly and cleanly reviewed, assuring that system changes, including new VAT rates, are implemented in a timely fashion.
“If a project is trending red, we can develop a plan to help the overall status trend green,” Tait says. “Statuses trickle up. We can see that impact and make decisions depending on that, which ties disparate engineering teams together.”
It didn’t take long for teams to see how using a flexible tool like Microsoft Azure DevOps for VAT compliance improved everything.
“You need buy-in from everyone to not only use Azure DevOps, but to be proactive in linking communications through the platform,” Colreavy says. “As we started moving through the first projects and they went live successfully, it really demonstrated that we didn’t need as many emails and calls to manage a project. We could do it within Azure DevOps directly.”
And with so many of Microsoft’s employees still working remotely, Microsoft Azure DevOps will continue to support a hybrid workplace.
“We want to make the best use of people’s time,” Colreavy says. “We don’t need to call people to check project status if it’s being tracked through Azure DevOps. We want to use it as much as today, if not more, in the future.”
The creative use of Microsoft Azure DevOps for managing VAT changes allows Microsoft Digital to quickly respond to regulatory change. Embracing this methodology improved transparency, communication, and collaboration. Projects are now tracked effectively, with fewer communication risks and a greater visibility into dependencies. Fewer calls, emails, and meetings are needed to complete a project.
“Using Azure DevOps and its features evolved things,” Tait says. “I know we’ve gotten quicker. Azure DevOps updates with all the correct user stories in the correct place.”
Learn how Microsoft is transforming modern engineering practices with Azure DevOps.
Discover how Microsoft operations evolved with Azure DevOps.
