Background
A national professional services firm's technology function was rated well by users but consumed by reactive work, and the firm had not funded a roadmap in four planning cycles. The partnership set one condition for the reset: no redundancies.
Analysis of the work intake found reactive and unplanned work taking the majority of engineering capacity, most of it originating from informal requests and projects bypassing intake.
Work performed
- Single intake with published service standards; urgent requests handled through a formal fast lane with a published price.
- Change process rebuilt in tiers: pre-approved standard changes, days-scale normal changes and a rarely used emergency path.
- Provider portfolio consolidated to a small set of partners with accountable scopes, renegotiated at natural expiry dates.
- Monthly investment forum with delegated authority; decisions recorded in the meeting.
- Capacity released by demand management moved to roadmap work; engineers supported through the transition.
Outcome
Nine months in, reactive workload had fallen 31% and project throughput risen 2.4 times on a slightly lower headcount through natural attrition. The change backlog cleared in six weeks and emergency changes fell to a handful per quarter. The first funded roadmap in four cycles was approved by the new forum, and its first two horizons were delivered in the following eighteen months. Attrition fell below the firm's average.