At a glance

A financial services company faced mounting challenges managing complex digital workflows because of a multitude of fractious work practices. Delivery delays, fragmented processes, insufficient collaboration and unclear roles hindered their ability to meet market demands. They needed to revamp their strategy and processes for completing tasks and modernizing their technology stacks. Kforce partnered with the company for a nine-week engagement to assess executive and IT strategies, diagnose systemic issues, standardize operations and align stakeholders. During this period, our experts created and implemented tailored solutions that meshed with the company's objectives, culture and Agile frameworks. These changes were designed to demonstrably reduce delays, rework, backlogs and release cycle times, while also improving dependency management, project execution and onboarding times.

From strategy to implementation, we provide the knowledge and leadership our clients rely on to accelerate their business. Our proven team takes a unified approach to driving large-scale change and unlocking new opportunities for growth and success.

Improving FinServ cycle times with Agile readiness and automation

Custom solutions to achieve your goals

Together Toward Tomorrow

Challenge

The company’s teams over time had all developed different product cycles, intake processes, schedules and meeting structures. This disconnect led to errors, confusion, delays and redundant work efforts. All these challenges made it difficult for teams to coordinate plans, spot dependencies between groups and confidently commit to deadlines. Role clarity and team structureThe responsibilities of scrum masters, key facilitators in the Agile framework, were often shared or diluted, leading to inefficiencies and unclear job ownership. Inconsistent Agile practicesSome groups operated using two different Agile methodologies, either SAFe or Scrum. Other groups used product‑cycle models. This caused misalignment and competing priorities across teams. Dependency bottlenecksEngagement with shared platforms and partner teams often happened ad hoc, with multiple stakeholders making requests in parallel, producing rework and timeline slips. Workflow and intake gapsTeams didn’t have a unified approach for handling large, complex projects. This included having different work-in-progress limits and definitions of “done.” Because of this, dependencies often came up late and tasks were delayed without digging into the reasons why. Technology change and capacity pressureModernization of underlying stacks added complexity and heightened the need for early dependency discovery, test automation and clear prioritization rules.

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Kunal Suri

MEET THE TEAM

Principal Consulting Solutions, Platform Engineering

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Bobby Vitrano

VP CONSULTING SOLUTIONS, Platform Engineering

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Solution

Project outcomes

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Kforce conducted a nine‑week assessment that combined reviews, team‑level workshops and interviews with product, engineering and platform leaders. This uncovered how work flowed from intake through delivery and identified pain points. Once delivery roles were clarified and operating principles were strengthened through coaching, a small number of changes were made to quickly show their impact and value. Standardized meetings and definitions across teamsEstablished a unified protocol for scheduling and structuring meetings compatible with SAFe and Scrum Agile frameworks, as well as a set of shared definitions. Teams now have consistency in how new work is brought in, with clear rules for estimating tasks, work-in-progress limits and transparent guidelines for when something is truly finished. Created a centralized engagement model for dependenciesIntroduced a single‑point‑of‑contact (SPOC) model and a structured dependency‑intake workflow. Instead of teams reaching out separately to shared services or external groups, everything now goes through one channel. This way, requests are organized and prioritized, and everyone can see what’s happening in real time. Identifying dependencies prior to sprint planningIntroduced pre-sprint dependency workshops and a readiness checklist so teams can verify what needs to be done upstream and downstream before committing to a project. Syncing planning cycles and intakeCreated a simple cross-team roadmap and unified intake form for complex projects to standardize work sizing and prioritization. These balanced features, defects and technical debt and made cycle‑to‑cycle handoffs predictable. Strengthened governance and role clarityResponsibilities were clarified for scrum masters, product owners, tech leads and platform SPOCs, with our team establishing an architectural runway practice to make cross‑cutting changes safer. Promoted automation and quality at speedRecommended targeted test‑automation improvements and CI/CD guardrails for API and endpoint changes, reducing manual rework and shortening validation cycles.

Solution

Once fully implemented, our solutions are expected to create the following improvements: 20–30% reduction in rework achieved through upfront dependency mapping and use of readiness checklists, resulting in fewer mid-sprint changes and increased delivery efficiency. 15% increase in platform capacity by coordinating and sequencing requests through a single point of contact and intake model, enabling shared services like ATLAS to recover time lost to uncoordinated demand. 40-50% decrease in last-minute dependency issues realized through earlier dependency discovery and aligned planning cadences, providing greater predictability and smoother program execution. 30-40% faster endpoint development cycles enabled by prioritizing automation and reuse for high-volume endpoints, reducing cycle time from 2–3 months to approximately 1.5 months per endpoint.

Project outcomes

15%

increased shared‑platform capacity

40-50%

fewer last‑minute dependency issues

20-30%

rework reduction

30-40%

faster endpoint development cycles

The combination of standardized cadences, early dependency management and clear ownership gave the company a controllable way to increase throughput without sacrificing quality or compliance. Our solutions position the organization to keep a clear line-of-sight from strategy to launch while implementing digital solutions quickly and consistently.

A six-month pilot program of these efforts has already seen major improvements. Further growth is expected as the project team continues to align with other stakeholders.

rework reduction

24%

increased shared-platform capacity

18%

fewer last-minute dependency issues

47%

faster endpoint development cycles

22%

Six months into the pilot, the company’s journey shows how a pragmatic operating model can unlock substantial improvements. Confidence in commitmentsWith shared intake and pre‑sprint dependency checks, leaders can give external stakeholders clearer timelines and defend them with evidence. Resilience during changeThe operating model was designed to accommodate modernization of underlying technology stacks, ensuring that system improvements and tracking of project dependencies can grow along with business plans. Repeatable executionThe playbooks, roles and meetings are much easier for new teams to use and adapt, so they can get up to speed quickly without starting from scratch each time.

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TJ Doton

Consulting Solutions Executive

MEET THE TEAM

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Kunal Suri

Principal Consulting Solutions, Platform Engineering

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Sean Kampas

VP Solutions Delivery, Platform Engineering

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Bobby Vitrano

VP CONSULTING SOLUTIONS, Platform Engineering