This organization had spent years trying to move off a legacy mainframe that ran nearly all of its core business logic, but every attempt to dismantle it left behind more complexity than it removed. There was no technology vision to guide the work and no trust between IT and the business, so decisions got made in isolation and priorities shifted without warning. The real problem wasn't the mainframe itself. It was that no one had ever built a plan for retiring it, or a way for IT and the business to agree on what mattered most.
Case Study
A five-year plan now exists to retire decades of technical debt.
This financial services organization had spent years accumulating technical debt on a legacy mainframe with no shared plan to address it. We built the technology vision, governance, and roadmap it had never had, and reconnected IT with the business it serves.
Engagement at-a-glance
Industry:
Financial Services and Insurance
Organization size:
~ 10,000 employees
Services:
Enterprise/Data Architecture
Technology Strategy & Portfolio Management
Technology Strategy & Portfolio Management
The Challenge
Every attempt to remove technical debt only added more of it.
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Technical debt with no plan to retire it
Nearly all of the organization's business logic still ran on a legacy mainframe, and years of attempts to dismantle pieces of it had only created a patchwork of duplicative, half-built solutions. Nothing had actually been removed. More had simply been added.
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No shared direction for technology investment
Without a technology vision, teams had no way to prioritize what to build next. Resources got pulled off major initiatives, like a multi-year data warehouse effort, with little explanation, leaving staff unsure why the work they had been doing suddenly stopped mattering.
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Fractured trust between IT and the business
The business didn't fully trust IT's decisions, and IT didn't fully understand the business problems it was solving for. That gap meant new initiatives regularly ran into adoption resistance or timeline pressure that undercut the ability to execute.
Our Approach
Starting with a clear picture of the organization before building anything new.
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1
Assessed the organization across IT and the business
We interviewed 39 full-time employees and 4 partner stakeholders to build a clear picture of the current environment, then presented the findings directly to the executive leadership team.
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2
Installed lightweight governance over technology decisions
We introduced a review process so every technology decision was evaluated against organizational priorities, giving leadership the structure to say no to work that didn't fit the direction.
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3
Built a long-term roadmap off the legacy mainframe
We created a multi-year plan for stepping away from the mainframe, along with the architecture and portfolio of work needed to execute it in stages rather than all at once.
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4
Mapped the advisor life cycle with the technical team
We ran a full-day workshop mapping the entire advisor life cycle with the technical team in the room, replacing generic requirements documents with a shared understanding of the business problems technology was meant to solve.
Value Delivered
A technology function finally pointed in one direction.
Built the first roadmap off the legacy mainframe
A multi-year plan now exists for retiring dependence on the AS400, broken into stages the organization can actually execute.
Established governance that leadership uses to say no
A lightweight review process now evaluates every technology decision against the organization's direction, something that didn't exist before this engagement.
Bridged the gap between business operations and technical execution
Workshops mapping the full advisor life cycle gave the technical team a shared, concrete picture of the business problems they're solving.
Rebuilt working trust between IT and the business
Business leaders now describe the IT organization as more accessible and easier to work with, a shift staff have noticed and spoken to directly.
Results that reflect the work behind them.
43
Stakeholders interviewed across IT, the business, and outside partners
60
Enterprise and departmental tools identified for potential remediation or investment
5-year
Roadmap built to retire the legacy AS400 mainframe
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