Implementing the Agile transition for a European insurer

Led an Agile transformation for a European insurer, releasing significant cost savings and a step-change in customer and market responsiveness.​

This ambitious new organisation drastically delayered the business and fundamentally redrew team structures. We set up the PMO and workstreams, worked with teams to detail the design and the implementation, and coached the workstreams beyond ‘day one’, fine-tuning governance and unblocking obstacles to delivery. ​

Context

Our client, COO of a national subsidiary of a European general insurer, was embarking on the implementation of an ambitious change programme. The goal was to transform the organisation’s structure and ways of working to become lower cost, faster, and more responsive to market dynamics and customer needs.

Drawing on best-practice methodologies, the new organisation was to be based on ‘Agile’ for product design and development, and on ‘Lean’ for distribution and delivery. And it would seamlessly integrate operations and the IT to support them.

Approach

Our role was to set up and run the PMO and workstreams to fine-tune the thinking and detail the design at every level, ready to launch the new organisation. The implementation challenge was significant: the design would deliver a drastically delayered organization based on ‘tribes’ as well as multi disciplinary ‘squads’ for the design and development of new products and service offerings. 

Having led the programme into day one of the ‘new world’ our lead consultant, deeply experienced in Agile and Lean, stayed on in a coaching role, recalibrating governance and ways of working, and supporting teams to overcome roadblocks to delivery. 

Impact

The programme’s successful implementation unlocked significant cost savings, tracking to plan, as well as enhanced agility and a drastically improved time-to-market for new products and service offerings.