These changes in the retail space meant this major UK retailer needed to radically transform its digital front end and underlying infrastructure.

In order to deliver this rapidly, the retailer needed to use agile for the first time. But the programme quickly ran into trouble due to a number of issues. The retailer and its suppliers hadn’t been able to establish a clear agile way of working together, but needed to get to a solution fast in order to establish ways of working, agree clear lines of delineation and accountabilities, as well as show progress and understand blockers.

We were asked to establish an agile assurance framework and agile programme management office (PMO) across the digital transformation programme with the goal of:

• Creating visibility into what had happened to date on the programme and what needed to happen to get everything back on track
• Gaining control and defining new ways of working across the programme within the business and with suppliers
• Establish a pragmatic governance structure to improve decision making and increase the businesses ownership of the transformation.

We conducted a maturity assessment of their agile approach and then presented options and recommendations to directors, along with a proposed transition plan, which was agreed and accepted. We then went to work implementing these new ways of working, to create a ‘digital production line.’ We implemented robust governance structures to ensure the right conversations and decisions were taking place at the right time (from C-suite executives down) and ensured that when new ideas came along, they had the right forum to be discussed and prioritised