Picture of the Jira platform for Schneider Electric

Global portfolio prioritisation for Schneider Electric

Schneider Electric is a global specialist in energy management and automation in more than 100 countries. Luminary was engaged to improve the management of the digital portfolio across different teams and countries to enhance visibility and reduce the time in which jobs and ideas are assigned and completed.

Client:

Schneider Electric

Tagged:

E-commerce & retail , Property & construction

How We Helped:

The challenge

Schneider Electric’s global presence has created an extensive distributed internal network. With different teams, products and platforms supporting their digital portfolio, a key challenge was effectively coordinating, planning and communicating the work within this portfolio. With regional offices deploying their own systems, administrative teams and infrastructure, it was clear that an aligned approach was needed that would still allow teams to adapt and respond to its own market concerns.

With a large list of stakeholder teams, and countries with different requirements and capacities, the result was a lack of visibility and an inability to effectively prioritise new initiatives and existing projects across their diverse digital portfolio. 

Flexibility and visibility were important criteria for the client, and the solution had to have functionality that would facilitate reporting and be able to scale with the users' and business needs. The key challenge was that the process had to equally support teams that were running different methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, sAFE etc) at different cadences, and using different tools to manage their work.

Picture of Schneider Electric ideas board on Jira

Our approach

The discovery phase

Luminary conducted a Discovery phase for Schneider Electric to determine a series of insights and key requirements. We provided a new process and way of working with a recommendation on software to execute the new process.

The discovery laid a foundation for understanding the needs and requirements and how this tool could be applied. The process entailed teams being interviewed to understand the requirements, while also understanding how things were currently being managed and how projects were being distributed by the central digital team. Process mapping and external research supported the interview insights, allowing Luminary to hone in on the solution requirements.

Picture of the Schneider Electric Jira platform image

What we did

Process and implementation phase

Luminary put forward a series of recommendations for Schneider Electric to assess, and Jira Product Discovery was quickly selected as the most effective tool for the job based on discovery findings. This decision came after researching and testing platforms to see how they would serve the various needs of these distributed teams, with Jira Product Discovery allowing Luminary to customise the tool to fit Schneider Electric’s exact needs. Alternatives had advanced capabilities, but the ease of use and flexibility of design was what made Jira Product Discovery the standout. Through robust process and workflow mapping, the Jira tool was implemented and configured for Schneider Electric's business.

The key challenge we had to address with the roll-out was avoiding any disruption for existing teams and platforms, as they were still being used to manage current work. We had to stagger the roll-out of the platform in such a way that teams could adopt it for new work easily. The project involved Luminary working with the global team, country teams and capabilities teams to better understand the difference in structures and how the pipeline of work flows and how decisions were made. This collaboration allowed us to respond to real use cases and examples, making necessary changes as we went before having a general release to the entire digital portfolio.

Conscious of there being possible resistance to change, great consideration had to be made in deciding how to roll this out. There was clear planning for teams that would retire existing systems eventually, as there were teams that were already working on projects so these teams had to be supported by the new process first before onboarding them. Fortunately, the timing of this project coincided with the end of the calendar year, and so the new platform was implemented for teams to use and trial. Setting up monthly portfolio planning allowed teams to effectively utilise the Jira tool. Existing ideas naturally finished on the previous systems, and new ideas were logged in Jira. 

As a result of the Jira adoption, the new monthly prioritisation process allowed Schneider Electrical to better support their individual teams and products that were already working in agile methodologies.

Picture of the Jira interface for Schneider Electric

The results

The Jira Product Discovery selection finally connected the dots across the entire delivery chain.

The greatest highlight was moving the team from an ad-hoc, top-down decision structure to a well-adopted, rapidly embraced project prioritisation platform. Within the first three months, there were over 1000 ideas on the board. Similarly, one stream turned into 25 streams very quickly, and this adoption allowed Luminary to troubleshoot anticipated issues. With so many ideas and so much complexity in this global brand’s workflow, rapid adoption was a sign of success.

The strategy hinged on a successful rollout to garner buy-in from teams and for it to become a central portfolio management tool. This meant pre-empting any possible reasons for teams to resist changing over, and help them manage those cases. Since the project has been rolled out, the global team has been communicating transparently and they now have a tool that will put them on a pathway that will grow with them.

“The Luminary team, led by Matt, swiftly moved in and successfully simplified complex processes and habits. They provided valuable recommendations regarding tooling, resulting in a streamlined and simplified process across our diverse digital landscape. Throughout the engagement, the Luminary team acted as our trusted partner, and we always felt in control of the pace at which they adjusted spending based on our environment.”

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