The IT organization had grown organically over time, resulting in unclear ownership, fragmented prioritization, and overlapping responsibilities across teams. Individual groups had rolled out Agile, SAFe, and ITSM practices on their own, but with no enterprise architecture strategy or governance model connecting them. A new platform or process wouldn't fix that. Only a structure built to make decisions without any one person in the room could.
Case Study
The gap wasn’t talent, it was structure built around individuals instead of roles.
A regional insurer's IT department had grown organically for years, leaving ownership unclear and its senior leadership bench thin ahead of upcoming retirements. We helped design a future-state operating model and governance structure the organization could grow into.
Engagement at-a-glance
Industry:
Financial Services and Insurance
Organization size:
~ 1,100 employees
Services:
Organizational Design
Business Operating Model Design
Strategy Governance
Business Operating Model Design
Strategy Governance
The Challenge
Every team had adopted a methodology. No one had adopted the same one.
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Ownership tied to people, not to capabilities
Structures had formed around whoever happened to be in a role rather than around the capabilities the organization actually needed going forward. With a key senior leader approaching retirement, there was no clear picture of what the function should look like once that leader was gone.
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Methodologies adopted team by team, not enterprise-wide
Individual teams had independently rolled out Agile, SAFe, and ITSM practices, but without a shared enterprise architecture strategy or governance model tying the approaches together. Friction between the Digital and BNSS functions in particular had built up around unclear ownership and overlapping responsibilities.
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No enterprise-wide way to prioritize or decide
As delivery scaled and modernization pressure increased, the organization had no consistent way to decide who owned a decision or how competing priorities got resolved across Digital, Technical Services, Enterprise Architecture, and Data & Analytics.
Our Approach
We mapped how the organization actually worked before proposing how it should.
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1
Interviewed and surveyed across every IT function
We ran 28 stakeholder interviews and 7 focus groups across Digital, BNSS, Technical Services, Enterprise Architecture, and Strategy & Portfolio to understand how work actually got done and where ownership was breaking down.
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2
Assessed current methodologies against a future operating model
We evaluated the organization's Agile, SAFe, and Waterfall practices alongside its ITSM processes to determine which pieces of the existing approach could carry forward and which needed to change under a more product-oriented operating model.
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3
Built three future-state organizational scenarios
Rather than proposing a single fixed structure, we developed three future-state organizational scenarios so leadership could weigh the tradeoffs of each before committing to a direction.
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4
Sequenced a phased roadmap tied to leadership succession
We built an implementation roadmap that phased the transition to account for upcoming leadership retirements, so the organization could move into the new structure without losing continuity.
Value Delivered
Direction the organization can act on, even as its leaders change.
Delivered three future-state scenarios for leadership to weigh
Leadership now has three distinct organizational paths, each with its own tradeoffs, rather than a single prescribed answer to react to.
Built a phased roadmap that accounts for leadership succession
The implementation roadmap sequences change so the organization's upcoming leadership transitions don't stall the transformation or leave gaps in ownership.
Clarified ownership across Digital, BNSS, and Technical Services
Recommendations tied specific decision rights to specific functions, addressing the friction that had built up between groups with overlapping responsibilities.
Gave leadership a shared view of governance and prioritization gaps
Executive stakeholders now share a common picture of where governance and prioritization break down, replacing what had previously been individual, function-level perspectives.
Results that reflect the work behind them.
28
Stakeholder interviews completed across the IT organization
7
Focus groups conducted as part of the assessment
3
Future-state organizational structure scenarios developed for leadership
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Work With Us
The firms that move fastest don’t wait for clarity. They create it.
We help leadership teams cut their ambiguity, align around what matters, and build the momentum to transform their business.