How do you speed up delivery when the delays start long before development begins?

Serving some of the world’s biggest brands, they relied on their B2B platforms to manage marketing materials and orders. But as the business grew, delivery slowed, and teams lacked visibility into where time was being lost.

Despite using Scrum, agile maturity varied across teams, prioritization was often driven by immediate requests rather than business value, and customer feedback rarely reached product teams directly.

A three-month discovery engagement led by Emergn revealed that the biggest delays occurred long before development began, during product discovery and prioritization. Key challenges included:

• Slow decision-making: Work sat in backlogs for months, often losing relevance before development started.
• Limited customer insights: Indirect feedback made it difficult to anticipate needs and identify opportunities.
• Lack of value-driven prioritization: Teams focused on completing tasks rather than delivering outcomes.
• Organizational barriers: Team structures and planning processes limited ownership, collaboration, and effective decision-making.

They needed to move from a project mindset to a product mindset, improving how teams identified value, prioritized work, and delivered meaningful outcomes.

The client’s product organization now moves from idea to release significantly faster, with measurable improvements in both discovery and delivery.

• 55% reduction in Product Discovery lead times year over year, accelerating the journey from idea to development.
• 56% reduction in Product Delivery lead times year over year, enabling faster delivery of valuable features.
• 50% reduction in backlog waiting times, from approximately three months to six weeks.
• $96,500 in annual savings identified on a single initiative, representing 2,333 hours saved in finance and customer enablement activities.

Beyond the numbers, the organization has embraced a value-driven product mindset. Teams now prioritize based on business value, limit work in progress, deliver in smaller increments, and engage directly with stakeholders and end users.

With leadership committed to expanding the use of Cost of Delay across product teams, these improvements have established a foundation for faster, more predictable delivery and continuous value creation long after our engagement.