Product operating model design for a multi-national financial services organisation
Programme led, centralised delivery hindering flow
The client’s centralised change delivery was hindering flow, causing fragmented accountability, and inconsistent prioritisation. Value was trapped in hand-offs across Change, Engineering and Ops. Funding was annual and output led; and governance was heavy on artefacts, light on outcomes.
The client needed a clear, executive owned design to pivot from projects to products - aligning accountability to value streams, improving flow efficiency, and creating a practical path to adopt modern product ways of working.
Designing a product led operating model
We co-designed a target operating model anchored on value streams and tribes/squads with Product, Tech and Design at the core. We defined chapter (capability) and guild (practice) constructs, decision rights and role clarity (PO/PM, Tribe Lead, Chapter Leads), and the measures (throughput, lead time, load, DORA) to steer delivery.
We re-engineered demand & funding from annual project capex to product-based, rolling horizons with guardrails, and introduced lightweight governance rhythms - QBR/ABR, cross-tribe dependency management, risk & compliance embeds, and a scaled scrum-of-scrums cadence.
We also mapped interim states and pilots, set adoption criteria, codified playbooks for planning, prioritisation and capacity and built a sequenced roadmap for transition, including platform as a product and shared platform ownership.
Business-approved implementation playbook
- Executive-approved blueprint with clear decision rights (incl. product ownership), tribe/chapter/guild design and governance cadences
- Faster flow by design: measures and playbooks to cut wait states and hand-offs and improve predictability
- Funding model shifted to product value: rolling, guardrailed budgets enabling continuous prioritisation and clearer cost to value signals
- Pilot to scale confidence: phased roadmap, pilot candidates and interim states to de-risk the pivot and accelerate adoption
