Motability Operations Limited
Putting people at the heart of the transformation

Motability Operations recognised the importance of delivering value early and continuously for their customers. To enable this, they decided to move from a project-centric delivery approach to a product-centric one. They also wanted to eliminate waste and speed up their time to market effectively.

As part of their new journey, Motability Operations knew the importance of looking at the way they work internally would be key, and wanted to ensure they take the whole team on the journey as a collective. Motability Operations knows Agility in Mind has a background in helping organisations transition to product teams successfully and so reached out to Agility in Mind to help them achieve their goals.

The Challenge

It was important for Agility in Mind to help the team at Motability Operations adopt a product-centric mindset and take the team on the journey together.   Motability Operations already had effective practices in place, however, moving to a new product operating model, we needed to make sure Motability Operations were adopting practices that supported alignment with the market.

During the discovery phase, Agility in Mind identified some main challenges:

• Work is happening on too many things simultaneously.

• Single points of failure within the teams.

• Duplication of work is happening.

• Long lead time to get work approved.

Our Approach

Agility in Mind worked alongside multiple teams to ensure everyone was on the same page and understood what they were doing and why. We wanted to talk to people about what the agile mindset is, and why is it important to encourage people to adopt new working practices. Once it was fully ingrained, we moved on to working practises. This included:

• Collaborating with the Exemplar teams to implement a range of agile frameworks, adapting their agile processes to become more effective and deliver value.

• Emphasising the agile principles, so the intent behind the practices was clear and processes could evolve through understanding the principles.

• Fully incorporating the Product Manager role into their processes.

• Collaborating with the Core Tech teams to create a mission statement to influence the work being done and support ways of working so they can demonstrate the value to stakeholders.

• Provided interactive workshops aligned to the business goals to reduce waste and encourage focus on those goals.

• Worked alongside the Leadership team to develop a Governance process review and implement it to improve lead time.

• Transform conversations from features and capabilities to business goals and outcomes.

The Outcomes

The mobility market will continue to move at a pace, and now the product team at Motability Operations are in the right position to be able to respond to customer needs effectively. Their teams understand the product, they’re able to work effectively together and collaborate, to ensure they do the right things at the right time.

• Teams have increased independence.

• Team members are able to work effectively together and collaborate.

• They challenge themselves to inspect and adapt their working practices.

• Teams can deliver work repeatably, effectively, and with minimal waste.

• The mission provides the teams with a clear sense of purpose.

• Team  members have each other’s backs, which is really, important in a product team space.

• Right place both culturally and practically to deliver value for their customers moving forward.

• Eliminated many bottlenecks.

• Stronger relationships with their stakeholders.

What the client said

Agility in Mind was extremely helpful and ultimately this has helped us focus on the right things and deliver them in the right way with the maximum efficiency, helping us challenge ourselves to identify and drive value and also ensure that people are able to take the journey effectively was extremely helpful. We now feel that we’re in the right place both culturally and practically to deliver that value for our customers moving forward.

Matt Scott - Change and Transformation Lead at Motability Operations Ltd