Eastern Regional Utility went from a stalled Waterfall PMO and two failed outside firms to a federated SAFe portfolio with 200+ FTEs converted via Build-Operate-Transfer.
Eastern Regional Utility was running a traditional Waterfall PMO with no portfolio visibility above the program level. Grid modernization mandates were arriving from federal and state regulators faster than the existing delivery cadence could absorb. Multiple OT/IT integration programs were missing milestone gates, and the executive team had no shared view of where the slippage was actually happening.
The breaking point was a cluster of capital projects that should have moved through portfolio governance in a single planning cycle. Instead, scope re-baselines were happening project-by-project, funding was being re-allocated in side meetings, and the delivery teams in the field were getting whiplashed by priorities that shifted weekly. Two outside firms had already tried to install Agile transformation programs and had walked away inside 18 months. We came in with the explicit charter to embed and stay.
By the time Summit was engaged, the financial and operational fallout was visible at every level of the org. Regulatory penalties were accruing against specific grid modernization milestones, with two state PUCs already issuing formal notices. Capital project overruns had crossed $40M over two fiscal years, and the audit committee was getting briefed monthly on the exposure.
Internally, the delivery org was bleeding. Annual attrition hit 22% across the PMO and engineering teams, well above utility-sector norms. Two outside transformation firms had failed in succession before us, which meant the in-house teams arrived at the engagement skeptical. The work upfront was not just standing up SAFe, it was rebuilding trust that a transformation could actually land.
Summit deployed embedded Release Train Engineers and SAFe Program Consultants across six Agile Release Trains over the first 18 months. We did not run this as a classroom rollout. Our consultants sat inside the client's governance forums from PI Planning through Inspect & Adapt, and our coaches reported into the client's transformation lead, not into a separate Summit engagement structure.
In parallel, we stood up a Business Transformation Office and a Lean Portfolio Management practice that owned the funding-to-flow connection. This is the layer that previous firms had skipped. Once the BTO was operating, portfolio decisions moved from side meetings into a documented cadence with regulatory milestone visibility baked in.
The third leg was the Build-Operate-Transfer arc. Roughly 200 contractor FTEs converted to permanent client headcount over the three-year engagement, a phased transfer that gave the client a permanent in-house capability without the carrying cost of staff that would have churned the moment Summit left. This is not consulting theater. We delivered to 95% and engineered our own exit.
Once the BTO took ownership of portfolio-to-program flow, regulatory milestone risk effectively went to zero. The Build-Operate-Transfer model gave the client a permanent in-house capability without the carrying cost of staff that would have churned with the engagement. By the third year, the federated reporting layer was running the cadence itself, and Summit's footprint was down to a small advisory team helping the in-house transformation lead hold the line.
First Agile Release Train through PI Planning. Demonstrated the cadence to executive sponsors.
Business Transformation Office stood up. Lean Portfolio Management funding model live.
Six Agile Release Trains in synchronized PI cadence. Federated portfolio reporting live for the executive team.
200+ contractor FTEs converted to permanent client headcount. Summit footprint reduced to advisory.
30-minute discovery with a practitioner. We will point at the most relevant case during the call.
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