We partnered with a major US lender to lead the consolidation of two active Jira instances, encompassing a total of 7,500 users. Our approach focused on implementing standardized enterprise controls and unified reporting, ensuring consistency and transparency across the organization. Through this consolidation, we enabled the client to launch an enterprise-wide initiative to standardize on Block Funding, aligning funding mechanisms with agile ways of working. This transformation not only streamlined operations but also empowered the organization to better support its strategic priorities and drive sustained business agility.

Large US Lender

Background

A large US lender hired Deloitte to lead the consolidation of 2 active Jira instances totaling 7,500 users to ensure standardized enterprise controls and reporting. This ultimately enabled an enterprise-wide initiative to standardize on Block Funding, to align funding with agile ways of working.

Approach

• Prototyping: Rapidly defined the new profile schemes on the target Jira environment and iterated to build out functionality for early information
• Stakeholder Feedback: Conducted demos to key stakeholders of new functionality at end of every sprint to identify improvements and optimize features
• Self-Service Enablement: Produced comprehensive migration support package of automated onboarding, templates, and documentation targeted at a variety of stakeholders to streamline transition and decrease cost
• Non-technology Teams: Added system configurations to support non-technology agile teams to expand enterprise agility into corporate functions
• Integration: Integrated Jira with other systems to ensure completeness of enterprise controls across the organization
• Test Automation: Implemented test automation scripts subsequent to feature implementation and add to automated regression suite

Results

• Block Funding Enablement: Provided functionality necessary to support enterprise goal of managing funding in tighter alignment with agile ways of working to enable enterprise agility
• Compliance by Default: Consolidated all functionality onto a single environment, allowing teams to focus on doing their work and rely on Jira to ensure enforcement enterprise controls, reducing overhead and streamlining work
• Risk Reduction: By pulling data from a system of record, compliance packages can be produced uniformly via automation, ensuring that audits produce more predictable results with reliable evidence quality and content

We were engaged by a leading US health system to consolidate five existing Jira instances into a single, unified platform. By driving this transformation, we aimed to increase organizational agility, efficiency, and effectiveness. Our ongoing efforts have resulted in streamlined processes and a significant reduction in manual effort for stakeholders, enabling the health system to operate more cohesively and respond more effectively to evolving business needs.

Large US Health System

Background

A large US health system hired Deloitte to consolidate five existing Jira instances a single, unified instance to increase agility, efficiency, and effectiveness. This ongoing effort has resulted in streamlined processes and reduced manual effort for the stakeholders involved.

Approach

• Jira Assessment: Provided insights into the current state of agile and Jira practices, supporting informed decision-making and stakeholder buy in
• Integration: Integrated Jira with third-party tools to meet requirements and expand the enterprise collaboration efforts
• Consolidation: Consolidated the five existing instances into one instance to streamline project management and reduce duplicative effort
• Training and Documentation: Created a comprehensive user guide and conducted trainings to encourage adoption of the new integrated Jira environment.
• Reporting: Used to gather real-time insights into team performance, increasing transparency and accountability
• Formalization: Formalized Jira requests, processes, and priorities to reduce dependency on third-party sources and increase productivity across the enterprise

Results

• Scalability & Adaptability: Ensured the organization had the enterprise capabilities, support, and knowledge to grow and adapt to changing ecosystems, which previously were not in place
• Risk & Manual Effort Reduction: Reduced the risk of duplicative and incongruent work between systems and encouraged a more agile and improved standard of work

We partnered with a global financial services company to configure and enable their client implementation platform in Jira Cloud. Managing over $2 trillion in client assets on their Alpha platform, the organization faced a critical need to enhance operational efficiency. Through our implementation efforts, we streamlined processes and reduced manual effort by 60%, empowering the company to deliver a more efficient and scalable client onboarding experience while maintaining the highest standards of service.

Global Financial Services Company

Background

A Global Financial Services Company hired Deloitte to configure enable their client implementation platform in Jira Cloud. This company manage $2T+ in client assets that come onto this Alpha platform, driving the critical need to improve efficiencies. Overall, our implementation efforts helped to improve efficiency / reduce manual efforts by 60%.

Approach

• Refactored Jira: Refactored the Jira instance to support the framework. Included a 5-tier hierarchy via Advance Roadmaps, plus numerous custom fields and workflow changes
• Created a Template Jira Backlog: Setup a “gold-standard” template Jira backlog, which served as the source-of-truth for all other client implementations
• Automated Onboarding: Built a Java application to automate project & backlog creation for newly onboarded clients. Backlog creation involved reading the template backlog and then re-creating that backlog in the target project, ensuring that the new backlog is fully up-to-date
• Automated Tollgates: Added automation rules and workflow customizations to “lock” Jira issues if they had upstream dependencies / pre-requisites, and automatically “unlock” issues when upstream dependencies are complete
• Atlassian Analytics: Set up 3rd party (AWS) data streaming architecture to integrate data from financial and resource management systems into Jira execution based KPIs for hybrid executive dashboarding
• Confluence Integration: Integrated JSM with Confluence to manage PMO artifacts / documents, leveraging customized workflows and role-based transition approvals

Results

• Memorialized Implementation Framework: Aligned Jira to the standardized framework for consistency and adoption​ and developed a complete repository of implementation artifacts in Confluence
• Reduced Manual Effort: Manual backlog setup via CSV import would take ~2 FTE days due to complexities with hierarchy and issue linking. The automated onboarding reduced this to ~1 hour with no manual setup involved
• Enabled Backwards Compatibility: Changes made to the Template Backlog were automatically rolled out to existing client backlogs, ensuring that all implementations are always 100% in-line with the latest content
• Introduced Guardrails: The Jira tollgates ensured that pre-requisite work was always completed before downstream work items could be initiated. This was pivotal to the success of the Implementation Framework.
• Automated Document Management : Created new system for PMO artifacts, with capabilities including deep versioning, auditing / analytics, stakeholder approval via custom workflows, change management processes, and periodic compliance attestations
• Improved Reporting: Created automation-driven dashboards, scalable to all projects under PMO governance for RAID, RAG, CCB, etc.

We assisted our client with a comprehensive Agile transformation, implementing supporting tools such as Jira, Jira Align, and Anaplan to enable portfolio transparency across all levels of the organization—from the CEO to individual developers. By integrating these solutions, we empowered leadership and teams with real-time visibility into portfolio performance, alignment, and progress, fostering informed decision-making and driving greater organizational agility.

Agile Portfolio Transformation and Jira Tool Setup

CHALLENGES

Overall

• Organization wanted to understand how $3B+ annual technology spend  aligned to business strategy
• Needed visibility to resource capacity planning at the enterprise level

Product Complexity

• Different level of Agile maturity across different business units
• Jira / Jira Align tied in with over 15 supplementary enterprise systems
• Multi-modal delivery mechanism

Org Complexity

• Global Firm
• 12k+ people across the tech enterprise
• 24+ countries across the globe

APPROACH

The client wanted to transform their Agile Governance and Portfolio processes and Deloitte supported them by:

• Establishing a hierarchy that ties agile work to strategic objectives and business strategy allowing for portfolio transparency
• Stood up governance forums to review work health and assist with future quarter planning and forecasting
• Conducted portfolio reporting sessions to provide portfolio transparency
• Implemented a portfolio costing framework to account for every dollar of annual technology spend
• Leveraged historical actuals to provide better forward-looking resource and financial forecasts

KEY OUTCOMES

• Developed agile portfolio views with supporting hierarchy to support CEO to developers
• Enabled view to understand cross dependencies across the portfolio
• Leverage Jira Align to conduct quarterly portfolio planning
• Moved from Annual Budgeting and planning to rolling quarterly forecast
• Tied work spend to outcome focused objectives measured by OKRs and KPIs

We partnered with a large global bank to lead a major migration of 17,000 agile practitioners and 2,000 projects from Rally to Jira, supporting the organization’s multi-year global agile transformation. Our efforts were focused on enabling uniform CI/CD support for regulatory compliance, reporting, and other enterprise initiatives impacting 45,000 agile practitioners. Additionally, we established a production instance of a new test management tool for 65,000 users, reduced software costs by $8 million annually, and enabled consistent system administration across the enterprise. This transformation positioned the bank to operate with greater efficiency, transparency, and scalability in support of its strategic objectives.

Large Global Bank

Context

A large global bank partnered with Deloitte to help lead a major migration of 17,000 agile practitioners and 2,000 projects from Rally onto Jira in support of their multi-year global agile transformation with a view to:

• Enable uniform CI/CD support for regulatory compliance, reporting, and other enterprise initiatives supporting 45,000 agile practitioners
• Stand up production instance of new test management tool for 65k users
• Reduce software costs by $8M annually
• Enable uniform system administration

Approach

Deloitte led the following iterative approach to definition and enablement of new agile standards

1. Collaborate with transformation leads and coaches to agree updates to standards
2. Implement updates to support new standards in CI/CD
3. Demo to stakeholders and collect feedback
4. Repeat

The above feedback loop was executed multiple times within each of the following contexts

• With enterprise workgroup of transformation leads and agile coaches for broad and deep feedback
• With specific business partners in support of business unit-specific needs
• With business unit workgroups for rapid Q&A

The feedback loop was repeated again with the enterprise workgroup after production launch based on feedback from full population

Value Delivered

• 45,000 agile technology practitioners aligned on single agile tool receive all custom-built feature updates
• Annual cost reduction of $8M and timely delivery saved bank a further $5M late offboarding penalty
• Streamlined tools & support for 2,000 teams moving from 5 separately administered Rally systems, ALM, and  a variety of spreadsheets and documents onto a single centrally administered Jira instance with integrated test case management, later enabling centralized tooling enforcement for a new Global Change Policy
• Production launch of new test case management system ultimately planned to support 65,000 practitioners