Product Team Restructure

Product Team Restructure – From Programme Delivery to Strategic Product Mindset

An NHS England product team was struggling to transition from programmatic delivery to product-centered operations while facing:

Strategic disconnect causing prioritization difficulties
Overwhelming fire-fighting mode with constant reactive work
Budget constraints requiring more efficient operations
Siloed disciplines (product, delivery, user research, assurance) working independently
Heavily regulated assurance teams being unable to effectively work in an agile way
Key team members still wanting to operate in a programmatic mode

Strategic Analysis & Restructure

Analyzed team setup and identified strategy misalignment
Conducted cross-functional interviews with product, delivery, UX, and assurance managers
Proposed a multidisciplinary squad structure aligned to strategic objectives
Created a comprehensive product coaching plan for performance improvement

Change Management & Skills Development

Ran retrospectives and workshops to support the assurance teams in agile practices
Partnered with key stakeholders to build alignment and mutual understanding of product mindset
Coached product leaders to adopt a multidisciplinary approach when faced with difficult prioritization decisions, encouraging them to identify engineering and UX leaders that could work with them as a product trio.

Team Culture Transformation

Introduced the concepts of opportunity and user needs mapping
Encouraged early stakeholder involvement in assurance and engineering during shaping phases
Provided ongoing 1:1 and team coaching for product managers and key delivery managers

Successfully restructured siloed disciplines into cohesive multidisciplinary squads, taking into account budget constraints.
Achieved strategic alignment between individual squads and organizational objectives.
Reduced fire-fighting through improved prioritization and stakeholder engagement.
Achieved a higher level of collaboration with assurance teams through targeted education and relationship building.
Created more collaborative team culture with improved cross-functional working.
Established sustainable product management practices and coaching frameworks for the teams to use and further develop independently.

Key Achievement: Transformed an inherited programmatic thinking into a product mindset that linked strategy to delivery.

Do you have a shrinking budget and an ever-growing backlog?

Do you see discipline silos even though you have multidisciplinary squads?

Are your product teams doing a lot but not getting the outcomes they need?

I can help you find balance between business, user and squad needs, linking strategy to delivery. Get in touch to discuss your specific needs.