+40% qualitative delivery in 6 months: the governance that worked at Allianz

Context

In 2021, Allianz Trade launched an international programme to harmonise its information system applications across multiple countries. The strategic ambition was clear: align entities spread across several countries around a shared application foundation, within a fully English-speaking working environment.

This type of programme brings together multiple sources of complexity at once. On one side, a diverse set of stakeholders — product, IT, business, and local management teams — each with their own priorities and pace. On the other, the drive to converge toward a common reference framework, which requires difficult trade-offs and tight coordination across time zones and working cultures.

It was in this context that Dibrilou Diagne stepped in as PMO and Agile Coach, with a clear mandate: structure the delivery organisation so the programme could meet its commitments.

The Problem

At the outset, the programme lacked a shared framework. Teams were working, deliverables were moving forward — but visibility into the actual state of delivery was insufficient. Several symptoms were characteristic of this type of situation:

• No common priority reference: each team managed its own urgencies independently, without alignment to programme objectives.
• Fragmented deliverable tracking: there was no consolidated tool or ritual to know, at any given point, what had been delivered, what was in progress, and what was at risk.
• Inconsistent delivery quality: some deliverables were produced quickly but required significant rework; others accumulated delays with no early warning signal.
• Poorly structured international coordination: in a multi-site, multilingual environment, decisions were slow, and inter-team dependencies were not sufficiently anticipated.

This is not an exceptional situation. It is, on the contrary, a near-systemic state in large IT programmes when governance is not established from the start. The question is not whether the teams are competent — they are. The question is whether they have the framework to be effective together.

What I Put in Place

The response was not a tool, nor an off-the-shelf methodology. It was a governance framework built from scratch, tailored to the programme's specific constraints: international scope, teams familiar with agility (Scrum/SAFe), and an existing JIRA toolset.

Priority Definition

The first step was to establish a shared priority reference. This meant bringing the right people together — around the same table or the same screen — and formalising what matters, in what order, and why. Prioritisation work is never purely technical: it engages trade-offs between directorates, countries, business logic, and IT constraints. The PMO's role here is to facilitate those trade-offs and ensure they are fully traceable.

Deliverable Tracking

A tracking dashboard was set up in JIRA, providing real-time visibility into deliverable progress by team and by scope. The goal was not to produce reports for reporting's sake: it was to give every stakeholder — from the project manager to the sponsor — a clear, shared view of the programme's status.

Quality Indicators

Delivery quality is not measured solely by on-time completion. Indicators were defined to track deliverable conformance against acceptance criteria, rework rates, and the stability of releases over time. These metrics made discussions objective and moved the conversation away from subjective judgements.

Steering Rituals

Regular rituals were introduced: weekly inter-team synchronisation meetings, bi-monthly programme reviews with sponsors, and dedicated blockers resolution sessions. These rituals are not an end in themselves — they are the mechanism through which governance stays alive and adjusts continuously.

Team Alignment

Finally, agile coaching accompanied the rollout of the framework. Teams were supported in integrating Scrum and SAFe practices into their daily work — not as an additional constraint, but as a lever for greater fluidity. Adoption of a common framework at the scale of an international programme relies as much on education as on tooling.

The Results

After 6 months, the programme recorded a +40% improvement in delivery quality. This figure reflects several concrete realities: deliverables accepted on first submission, fewer rework cycles, better risk anticipation, and a greater team capacity to identify and escalate blockers before they became incidents.

Programme visibility improved significantly. Sponsors had a clear view of progress. Teams knew what was expected of them and by when. Dependencies between entities were identified and addressed upstream.

These results were achieved in a demanding context — international, English-speaking, with teams from different working cultures — which reinforces both their value and their transferability.

What This Means for Your Organisation

The Allianz Trade experience illustrates a few principles that hold true in the vast majority of complex programmes, regardless of organisation size or industry.

Lightweight but real governance. Governing a programme does not mean burdening processes. It means establishing a minimal but enforced framework: clear priorities, visible tracking, respected rituals. Lightness is a quality — as long as the framework is genuine.

Prioritisation as a management act. A programme without explicit priorities moves in all directions at once — which is to say, nowhere effectively. Formalising priorities is a concrete service to teams: they know where to focus their energy.

Transparency as a trust tool. A shared dashboard is not a control mechanism. It is a trust mechanism: it allows everyone — teams, managers, sponsors — to read the same reality and make informed decisions.

Progressive adoption, not imposition. The agile coaching that accompanies a governance framework rollout is not a luxury. It is what makes the difference between a tool that gets adopted and one that gets worked around.

These principles were applied at Allianz Trade. They have also guided engagements with Chanel, MGEN, Air Liquide, and in the support of more than 25 teams — representing over 110 people managed.

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