Real-World Solutions.
Transformative Case Studies from My Professional Journey
CASE STUDY #1
Strategic Planning
Industry: FinTech
Size: ~24,000 employees
Revenue: ~$15 Billion
Market Presence: United States and Canada
Products/Services: mortgage, title & settlement, real estate, personal finance management, credit card, personal loans, etc.
Initiative Timeline: Q1 2020 - Q3 2023
Problem to be Solved
The goals of the organization were invisible. Work was siloed resulting in duplication of effort and weak collaboration. Team member engagement survey results reflected a lack of clarity around how daily work contributed to the big picture. Process and priorities were optimized locally, not at the enterprise level, resulting in waste and re-work.
Solution
Implement an enterprise goal-setting framework: OKRs (Objectives & Key Results). Train champions and leaders at all levels to aid in adoption. Connect the dots by cascading enterprise goals to business areas, where appropriate. Establish a rhythm of reviewing results and learnings. Communicate progress to the entire organization on a consistent frequency.
Impact
Increase alignment of organizational goals from 15% to 70%+ in under one year
Measurable key result progress reviewed quarterly
Increased focus from over 70 functional-level goals to 5-7 enterprise objectives
Trained 200+ leaders and business area champions on the OKR framework
Designed, developed, and launched a goal-tracking software tool to reinforce framework activities and automate progress reporting
Skills Applied
Enterprise goal-setting and scorecard reporting
OKR framework coaching
Instructional design
Change management
Internal communications
CASE STUDY #2
Digital Transformation
Industry: FinTech
Size: ~17,500 employees
Revenue: ~$4 Billion
Market Presence: United States and Canada
Products/Services: mortgage, title & settlement, real estate, etc.
Initiative Timeline: Q1 2017-Q4 2019
Problem to be Solved
The product development lifecycle was slow, technology was fragile, and partners were frustrated. Technology, product, and business partners lacked a common methodology to measure value and prioritize work effectively. The product roadmaps were not visible and commitments were hard to keep as scope constantly changed mid-development. The teams needed to feel more empowered to track, tweak, and improve processes with objective measurement. There was a demand for a common set of development tools and standards to reduce complexity and improve collaboration.
Solution
Establish a Transformation Office to plan and manage multiple change, learning, and implementation workstreams. Research and identify a framework for leveraging shared language and methodologies across business functions. Identify workstream missions, solutions, and what scope to tackle now, next, and later. Train leaders and team members across the executive team, product management, and technology groups to reinforce adoption. Implement systems and process changes to improve delivery. Make the work visible to stakeholders, drive decisions among leaders, and manage scope. Build and execute a robust change plan for all roles and team members directly or indirectly impacted. Run the heartbeat of the transformation by marketing learnings, accomplishments, and next steps to the entire organization through a robust communications strategy.
Impact
Trained over 2,000 team members and leaders on Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
Supported the creation of a 150+ member product management organization
Delivered improvement of 49% feature cycle time and 35% throughput
Reduced feature variability from 127 to 42 days
47% improvement in committed features delivered on time
Improved focus by reducing the technology project backlog from 200+ to 37 priorities
Skills Applied
Organizational change management
Product development lifecycle optimization
SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) expertise
Process improvement
Change management
Program management
Communication strategy
Software development practices and measurement
CASE STUDY #3
Enterprise PMO
Industry: FinTech
Size: ~20,000 employees
Revenue: ~$5 Billion
Market Presence: United States and Canada
Products/Services: mortgage, title & settlement, real estate, etc.
Initiative Timeline: 2019
Problem to be Solved
The company’s highest priority work was disorganized, missing timelines and accountability. There was no aggregate view of the highest investment work across companies and functional areas. The programs lacked sponsorship and had no designated leaders to make key decisions or reinforce the mission. Few programs had defined success measures or were tracking progress to milestones. Teams were working hard, but not as smart as possible. There were duplicate efforts and overlapping scope with teams solving similar problems in silos instead of collaborating. There were missed opportunities for value creation and ideas left on the table due to resource constraints or too much work in progress.
Solution
Develop a methodology for managing cross-company collaborative programs tied to enterprise strategic goals. Train highly skilled project managers on the program management lifecycle to upskill their ability and increase the scale and reach of their work. Establish a lean portfolio of programs that indicates the priority of investment (people and time). Align leader sponsors to the programs to make key decisions around scope, timeline, and resources. Encourage a partnership between program managers with sponsors to solve problems and illuminate results. Design and publish reporting that highlights learnings and progress bi-weekly. Set up an intake process for new programs to be reviewed and prioritized as innovation creates new opportunities.
Impact
Trained over 100 team members and leaders on the program management lifecycle
Managed the enterprise strategic portfolio ($150-300M investment)
Built a scalable intake process and reporting infrastructure
Managed resourcing of over 3500 team members in product, engineering, data, and marketing teams
Mapped all programs to strategic goals to ensure teams were working on the right things at the right time
Established the ePMO as center of excellence for all program and project related teams across the enterprise
Skills Applied
Portfolio management
Project & program management
Resource management
Communication strategy
Stakeholder management
Success metric reporting
CASE STUDY #4
Go-To-Market Approach
Industry: FinTech
Size: ~ 18,500 employees
Revenue: $3.8 Billion
Market Presence: United States and Canada
Products/Services: mortgage, title & settlement, real estate, personal finance management, credit card, personal loans, etc.
Initiative Timeline: Q4 2022 - Q1 2023
Problem to be Solved
The cross-functional go-to-market process was broken. Plans were slow to deliver, and resources were constrained mainly because priorities were unclear. Teams struggled to deliver MVP (minimum viable products) to the market to learn and adapt. There were multiple handoffs making workflow inefficient. The product marketing briefs were inconsistent in depth and format, if existent. Products lacked clear roadmaps and planning was very just-in-time and reactive. The organization needed a better understanding of the prize size for our ideas, the unique value proposition and client needs we were serving, and the marketing approach to reach our clients.
Solution
Collaborative design of a go-to-market framework (fit to company and cultural context) with input from multiple areas of expertise. Focus on four areas: assessing the market, defining the who, the what, and the how of product delivery. Develop high-quality resource materials for learning and reference. Build stakeholder buy-in by incorporating feedback. Train leaders and team members across the delivery functions to increase adoption and awareness of the bigger picture process. Define inputs and outputs and role handoffs more clearly to break open bottlenecks in the workflow.
Impact
Presented a refined go-to-market approach to executive leaders across 14 companies to gain alignment. Facilitated a two-day hybrid training workshop for senior functional leaders and received feedback from 100% of participants. Themes included (a) increased awareness of key go-to-market concepts, (b) alignment of terminology and framework, and (c) increased connection / stronger relationships between leaders and teams.
Hosted 3 additional hybrid workshops with ~150 attendees across functional groups in the first 60 days of the GTM training roadmap
Workshop attendees provided a post-training average rating of 4.5/5 in response to “I received value from this training and it was a valuable use of time”
Created a complementary 2-hour virtual accelerated workshop, with 100% of attendees noting they found value in the content.
Skills Applied
Strategic thinking and design
Process design
Instructional design
Product Marketing
Cross-functional collaboration and teamwork
Presentation and training facilitation