Accelerating Results
Digitizing IT so the business could move at the speed of the market
Energy
In three months, we turned a cost-laden IT group into a cash engine—saving 250,000+ hours, cutting vendor spend by 22%, and adding USD 50M EBITDA—by tying every sprint to outcomes, not activities.
The challenge
Volatile commodity prices, pandemic disruptions, and shareholder pressure forced the world’s second-largest LNG producer to squeeze more value from every barrel—and every budget line. Its 7,000-person IT organization, already three years into an “agile transformation,” was still seen as slow, costly, and overly dependent on big-ticket vendors. Leadership wanted IT to become the first line of defense for efficiency and innovation—yet adoption of new ways of working lagged and business partners kept taking their work (and dollars) elsewhere.
Our approach
We reframed “going agile” from a compliance program into a results engine.
Value first, methods second: We tied every squad’s backlog to a CFO-approved business outcome—cost removed, revenue unlocked, or hours returned to the field.
High-touch, high-tech rollout: A network of 120 “Agile Catalysts” coached teams live while a self-service digital playbook gave 24/7 guidance across 14 countries.
Embedded ownership: Product owners were pulled from the business, not IT, so success would be judged in production barrels and cash, not story points.
90-day proving ground: Four flagship use-cases—maintenance planning, drilling analytics, supply-chain automation, and HR self-service—became fast-cycle laboratories to show skeptics real impact inside a single quarter.
The results
10x payback in just 88 days—the pilot portfolio delivered $50 million in run-rate EBITDA via smarter routing, faster approvals, and automation of manual work.
250,000+ workforce hours released—equivalent to 130 full-time employees freed for higher-value tasks.
Vendor spend down 22% as in-house squads proved they could deliver faster and cheaper than external consultancies.
Board green-lit a three-year plan to scale the model company-wide, positioning IT as the digital engine of the enterprise rather than a cost center.
Why it worked
We shifted the narrative from “do agile” to “earn the right to keep work in-house.” By linking every ceremony to dollars and hours, frontline engineers suddenly spoke the language of the boardroom, and executives could see—in weekly digital dashboards—exactly how IT was turning code into cash.
Success bred demand: business units that had once bypassed IT now queued for spots on the agile roadmap.
Latest
Mining
Rescuing iron ore profits, retaining $450 million in revenue, and boosting throughput, quality, and safety
In three months, we converted a contract-killing quality crisis into a $486 million swing—proving that disciplined, human-centered execution can turn “continuous improvement” into quantum leaps.
Latest
Mining
Rescuing iron ore profits, retaining $450 million in revenue, and boosting throughput, quality, and safety
In three months, we converted a contract-killing quality crisis into a $486 million swing—proving that disciplined, human-centered execution can turn “continuous improvement” into quantum leaps.
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