Transformational Capacity & Trust Alignment for National Enterprise Brand
Situation
A national enterprise brand had a strong, mature delivery team facing critical levels of burnout. Their velocity had never been hire, but cross-functional stakeholders remained dissatisfied and the general perception of their team was that they were lazy and lacked strategic impact.
The 128 Collective focused on shifting the organization from reactive & request driven to a proactive, value-driven strategic planning model.
This involved a rigorous capacity-modeling framework and collaborative project planning process to result in repaired trust, restored and protected well-being for the delivery team, and quarterly execution aligned to business priorities.
Challenge
Upon performing a diagnostic of where the risk lies and where the root cause was located, our first realization was that this delivery team was essentially trapped inside a cycle of reactivity. Ad-hoc requests from various teams were squeezed into production schedules with no if’s, and’s, or but’s.
The delivery team was operating around the clock (literally up at 2am-5am working), but the perception from the business was that their output was low
There was no governance in place to evaluate whether requests should have delivery resources allocated to them or not
The delivery team leadership caught significant flak from the executive layer
Task
The absolute first priority on the roadmap was to systemize project planning. The objective of this system was to align cross-functional leadership on realistic delivery team bandwidth and create shared understanding of business goals.
Capacity Modeling
You cannot accurately plan without a baseline bandwidth. We factored in:
Fixed overhead (baseline operational commitments, recurring tasks, non-negotiable core responsibilities)
A 25% buffer allocation for PTO, admin, or critical fixes
This created a net capacity for us to start with when considering new initiatives.
Value Based Intake Process
It was time to flip the script on requests. Instead of treating the delivery team like a grab-and-go snack shack, we asked stakeholders to submit their wish list of quarterly priorities. The catch? Every wish list item required a business case to evaluate against:
A problem statement and objectives to solve for
Why we need this and why now
High-level operational requirements and any timeline constraints
Collaborative Prioritization & Scoping
The last thing we want to do with our work is isolate any part of the business. Which is why the next step we implemented in this system was an alignment review with all department heads.
During this session, we evaluated the wish list items against their annual priorities, business impact, and the net capacity model.
This session produced a list of what could be a consideration versus what needed to wait. Any considerations were then moved through final requirements gathering and scoping.
Formal Kickoff
To close the loop on the quarterly planning cadence, we created a joint meeting with everyone to:
Celebrate win’s and highlight all the work the delivery team completed in the last 90 days
Clearly communicate what is on the docket for the coming quarter, what is being deferred, and why
State the communication and mobilization plan so nobody is left guessing
Result
Our favorite part of our work is that it doesn’t just improve the lives of the teams we work with directly, but it often results in positive cultural shifts.
Restored trust & visibility: bringing shared understanding of delivery team operational constraints to eliminate perception of underperformance
Executive confidence: the executive layer could rest easy knowing that all quarterly projects were directly tied to business impact & company priorities
Protected team burnout: decreasing the need for work in the middle of the night, random surprises, and working tirelessly without appreciation
Value > Volume shift: beginning to shift the measure from the volume of what was done to measuring success by progress towards strategic objectives