Reduced delivery cadence across three business units in two quarters.
- Client
- Nordic energy operator · 1,200 staff
- Sector
- Renewable energy
- Geography
- DK · SE · NO
- Duration
- 6 months
Challenge
Three business units shipped on misaligned 12-week cycles. Dependencies were resolved by escalation, not design.
Engineering attrition had spiked to 19% — the cause was diagnosed by the board as 'process exhaustion', not compensation.
A regulatory deadline in two quarters made any failed pilot politically expensive.
Approach
01
Topology audit
Mapped team boundaries, hand-off protocols and dependency density across all three units in three weeks.
02
Pilot squad
Launched one cross-tier squad on a 4-week cadence with instrumented backlog and explicit decision rights.
03
Cadence rollout
Rolled the 4-week cadence to remaining squads across two quarters. Coach pairs embedded for the duration.
04
Capability transfer
Internal coach guild stood up. External coaches withdrawn on schedule with zero cadence regression.
Results
4 wks
Delivery cadence
−66%
Cycle time
−11pp
Engineering attrition
On time
Regulatory deadline
“We stopped escalating dependencies because we stopped having them. That single change saved the deadline.”
Mandate stack
- Team topologies framework
- Scrum + Kanban hybrid
- Dependency mapping (Wardley)
- Instrumented backlog metrics
- Internal coach guild
Other case studies
Restructuring
Holding consolidation, DK
Market Entry
Nordic entry, foreign capital
Compliance