Supporting a major Defence function in using product management to streamline work, forecast accurately and extend the planning horizon by over a year.
The Client Need
This Defence department, numbering approximately 200 Crown servants, civil servants and third party suppliers, was delivering a strategically critical Defence programme. While the overall goals were well defined, they had a large backlog of individual, often conflicting requirements from multiple Defence customers. The prioritisation process in use was not fit for purpose, meaning work regularly got reprioritised at short notice and the planning horizon rarely exceeded three months. The ask to us was to advise on how to bring customer stakeholders together, develop a coherent set of needs and extend the planning horizon to over a year.
Identifying the Challenge
Our first challenge was to understand the work required, how it related to the overall programme goal and why conflicting needs were arising. We accomplished this through a combination of 1:1 stakeholder interviews, group workshops and technical analysis of existing workflow management tools. Much of the feedback was both forceful and emotional so effective facilitation was essential.
This analysis highlighted an immediate challenge: the programme actually comprised a number of separate delivery streams but were treating it as one, with project managers “borrowing” capacity from each other to meet each latest urgent need. This resulted in highly reactive planning with lots of work getting started but very little getting finished.
The Solution
Our recommended solution, which the client adopted, was to structure programme into the identified streams, using service-centric and product-centric techniques, and break the single massive backlog into separate responsibilities. This involved training and mentoring a new product management function in the department and facilitating stakeholder prioritisation sessions, which we were later able to hand over to the department.
Clear priorities emerged in each stream, giving an initial roadmap. We were able to help further by coaching techniques for breaking work down to find common areas, simplifying the backlog.
The Outcome
By the time the contract ended, the department had a roadmap covering 18 months to two years. They also had embedded continuous improvement techniques, regular collaborative stakeholder priority reviews and clear programme reporting.