Where it started
At a client in the energy sector, configuring a product took 20 days. In that time, competitors brought their offers to market faster, and the client lost market share because its products came too late. On paper, software development had long been working in an agile way.
How the bottleneck showed
Only a small part of the 20 days was actual work on a configuration. Most of the time it sat and waited: for approvals, for questions between departments, for manual steps in between. Several departments had to sign off one after another, and every handover cost time.
Where it came from
The agile operating model had changed the teams. The approvals had stayed in the old line organisation. On top of that came a portfolio that had grown over years: every product variant brought its own special cases and its own coordination. The silos between the departments showed up one to one in the workflow.
What we did
Organisation
We reviewed the agile operating model and gave management recommendations on where approvals belong. Decisions that only created waiting time moved to where the knowledge sits.
Process
We made the end-to-end process visible with BPMN, from order to finished configuration, and measured across the entire value stream. Then we streamlined it along Lean principles: approval steps that only slowed things down were removed, manual steps reduced and the portfolio cleaned up.
What stays
Lead time has been at 5 days since then, and it has stayed there to this day. The client keeps track of the result with its own KPIs. It made 50% more revenue, set a new sales record and is market leader in time-to-market again, far ahead of the competition.
