Case study · Anonymised · Draft
Enterprise financial services transformation
This case study is unpublished pending verification and client approval of results and quotations.
SectorFinancial services
Customers~3 million
Tribes11
Value streams7
Squads~15
Internal users~4,000
Context
A large financial services organisation operating at scale across multiple tribes and value streams. Established Agile ways of working existed. Delivery predictability and cross-tribe dependency management were the leadership team's stated concerns.
Challenge
Portfolio commitments consistently outstripped the system's demonstrated throughput. Cross-tribe dependencies were unmanaged in aggregate—resolved locally, invisible in the whole. Improvement effort was substantial, but the system's throughput and predictability weren't moving.
System conditions
- — High work-in-progress at team and portfolio level
- — Dependency management owned locally, not systemically
- — Governance forums accumulating decisions rather than resolving them
- — Delivery evidence not routinely reviewed at portfolio level
Approach
Focused on making the system visible: flow measures at team, tribe and portfolio level; dependency mapping across streams; policy design for WIP, ageing work and decision cadence. Coaching for tribe leads, RTEs and portfolio governance.
Evidence used
- — Work-in-progress by stream and portfolio
- — Work-item age distribution and blocked time
- — Throughput and cycle-time trends
- — Dependency count and resolution time
- — Outcome measures agreed per stream
Experiments introduced
Portfolio-level WIP limits. Weekly work-item age review at tribe level. Dependency board with named owners. Governance cadence redesigned around decisions, not status.
Verified outcomes
Insert verified baseline.
Insert verified outcome.
Insert approved quotation.
Capability transferred
Internal coaches and RTEs trained to run the same reviews. Portfolio leadership operating the redesigned governance without external support. Improvement backlog owned inside the organisation.
Lessons for leaders
The largest sources of delay lived between teams, not inside them. Making the system visible was more valuable than adding process. Sustained improvement required leadership behaviour to change, not only team practices.