Case Study
Product Operations & Methodology
The work of giving product teams the conditions to do their best work has been a consistent thread across every organisation I have worked in.
These case studies trace that thread — from product team infrastructure built during organisational change and merger, through content release pipeline management at scale, to the consulting methodology and community practice that established the pattern.
Client names have been removed in line with standard consultancy confidentiality practice. References and further detail are available on request.
Foundations: Enterprise Process & Architecture
Business Process Re-engineering & Compliance Architecture — PRT Group / enherent · State of Connecticut DoL · Hartford Financial Services
Context: The product operations thread in my career has an enterprise architecture foundation underneath it. Before product management had a name I recognised as my own, I was mapping the systems underneath it: enterprise process modelling in ARIS, BPR facilitation at government scale, and SOX-compliant data and system flow documentation in regulated financial services. That grounding is what makes my product operations work structurally sound rather than procedurally tidy.
ARIS & Enterprise Process Modelling — PRT Group / enherent · CIGNA: I joined PRT Group as employee #12 — a professional services consulting firm, later rebranded as enherent. I had come from ACT (Advanced Computing Techniques), where I had been embedded in Hartford Life’s build-and-deploy team, and was brought into PRT specifically for my technical and client-facing capability. At PRT / enherent, I led enterprise process modelling engagements using ARIS — the architecture standard used by large organisations to govern, document, and analyse business processes at scale. Client work included CIGNA, where I mapped complex end-to-end processes requiring structured notation, governance discipline, and sustained multi-stakeholder management. I also developed enherent’s internal BA methodology and contributed to pre-sales RFPs, representing architecture capability at the point of client decision.
Business Process Re-engineering — State of Connecticut, Department of Labor: I held the title of Business Process Re-engineer (contractor) at the Connecticut Department of Labor, working within the Unemployment Tax Division — the business-facing function through which employers meet their unemployment insurance obligations. I co-wrote the engagement approach, co-facilitated stakeholder workshops across the division, and produced a joined-up departmental process map covering the full employer tax cycle. An impact/effort matrix structured the findings into a prioritised set of recommendations, presented to senior leadership and reviewed with stakeholders for accuracy before any change was proposed. This is BPR at government scale: regulatory compliance processes, external business stakeholders, and an obligation to show public value in every recommendation.
SOX Compliance Architecture & Requirements Prototyping — Hartford Financial Services (HTSC): At Hartford Technology Services Company, I mapped data and system flows for the Group Benefits division’s finance applications as part of a Sarbanes-Oxley compliance programme. SOX work demands precision: every flow has a governance implication, every gap is a regulatory exposure. I identified misalignments, coordinated with Audit, and put remediation in place — closing the compliance exposure the mapping had surfaced. Separately, I self-directed a commercial bond agent portal prototype using iRise — an enterprise-grade requirements prototyping tool — demonstrating what structured requirements modelling could deliver before a development team was engaged. The initiative earned a commendation from Bill B., Senior Project Manager, recognising both the initiative taken and the value of the approach.
Outcome: Enterprise process models at ARIS standard delivered to financial services clients. A government-scale BPR exercise covering the CT DoL Unemployment Tax Division — departmental process map, impact/effort prioritisation, senior leadership presentation. SOX-compliant system and data flow documentation coordinated with Audit to remediation. An iRise prototype that earned internal recognition and introduced structured requirements modelling discipline where it had not been applied before.
Product Team Infrastructure & Merger Integration
Scaling Product Operations — Talis Learning, a Kortext subsidiary
Context: Kortext acquired the Talis product suite and support team from Technology from Sage — itself formed from the merger of Talis Education Ltd, Lean Library, and SciWheel under Sage Publishing. The resulting organisation needed common ways of working, shared tooling, and a product team infrastructure that could support scaling without losing the operational clarity that had made each organisation function. I joined during this period and took on the operational layer alongside product delivery.
What I did: I established Confluence architecture for the product team — designing the space structure, naming conventions, and governance skeleton, then validating it through real product use before treating it as settled. As the merged team established shared ways of working, I contributed to the launch readiness patterns that took shape across the team — participating as the shared language around release readiness developed.
I participated actively in the product Community of Practice — drawing on CoP experience that stretched back to co-founding the Product CoP at National Trust and my earlier involvement at HTSC. I also worked across Notion and Confluence, maintaining documentation and operational records across both tools as the organisation determined its preferred stack.
I was a consistent and experienced voice in the customer webinar programme — a series owned by the PMM function and presented by the full product team. I contributed to content quality, slide readability, and post-session retrospectives, actively working to improve each session. I contributed to the overall growth in customer engagement across the programme.
Outcome: A Confluence architecture adopted across the product team. A webinar programme that drove measurable customer engagement and informed roadmap direction through structured feedback loops. 94% feature adoption within 6 months on key product improvements — friction removed, workflows improved.
Product Operations During Organisational Change
Scaling & Interim Leadership — Preservica
Context: During a period of organisational change at Preservica — a digital preservation platform serving archives, museums, government, and heritage organisations — I stepped into an expanded remit at Head of Product level while the organisation recruited at CPO level. This was not a planned transition; it was a response to a leadership gap, and it required me to stabilise delivery, maintain stakeholder confidence, and keep the product moving.
What I did: I maintained product delivery continuity across engineering, customer success, and commercial stakeholders during the transition. I maintained the quality gate between customer-reported issues and development priority — routing accurately across teams without formal authority over them.
I made a considered Senior PM appointment during this period — adding capacity without diluting direction. I also partnered with senior product strategy leadership on roadmap decisions, grounding them in the operational reality I could see across multiple product workstreams.
Outcome: Delivery continuity maintained through a senior leadership gap. A clear triage and routing system that protected engineering focus. A team strengthened by a well-judged hire. Stakeholder confidence preserved through a period that could have been significantly more disruptive.
Content Release Pipeline & Operational Continuity
Digital Production Operations — Cengage / Gale Learning
Context: Large-scale XML transformation programmes move millions of files across continents. The operational systems that keep those pipelines running are as important as the content schemas themselves. During a multi-year digitisation programme at Cengage, I took on informal ownership of release pipeline continuity — not because it was in my job description, but because I could see where the system was breaking and knew how to fix it.
What I did: When a network outage mid-transfer caused batch files to arrive intact, corrupted, or not at all, I recognised the operational bottleneck: the UK team was waiting for the US team to wake up before troubleshooting could begin. Working with a PERL scripter, I gained access to error logs and conversion scripts. The webserver administrator granted staging access, and I gained visibility into the cron jobs controlling automated processing.
With logs, staging, and cron access, I could diagnose failures immediately, restart broken jobs, correct malformed files, and validate successful transfers — often resolving issues before the US team came online. I also adjusted my own working pattern on release days, staying later to ensure full batches completed cleanly before leaving.
This is evidence-based process design in practice: I did the work first, learned what the real flow required, then built the access and the habits that made the pipeline reliable.
Outcome: Multi-day delays reduced to same-day resolutions. A release pipeline that no longer depended on transatlantic handoffs for basic troubleshooting. A working pattern that absorbed operational risk rather than passing it downstream.
Process Methodology & Community of Practice
Ways of Working & Community of Practice — enherent · HTSC · National Trust · Talis Learning
Context: At enherent — formerly PRT Group — I contributed to building and applying the firm's consulting methodology through live client delivery. This was firm-wide methodology: the standards, templates, and ways of working that gave every client engagement a common foundation, developed through practice rather than designed in isolation.
What I did: I contributed to pre-sales RFPs, representing the consulting capability to prospective clients. I served as a mentor in the firm's BA mentoring programme during its founding year — the programme launched with a cohort introduction before moving to regular one-to-one sessions. I provided a listening ear, structured reflection, and practical guidance drawn from my own consulting experience.
Later, at The Hartford Technology Services Company (HTSC), I participated in the BA Community of Practice — a group of senior BAs working together on method-building, standards, and onboarding across the corporate BA practice. I joined circa 2012, contributing to the shared language and professional infrastructure the group was establishing.
The CoP thread continued through my UK career. At National Trust in 2020, I co-founded the organisation's Product Community of Practice — establishing shared rituals and ways of working across digital product teams. At Technology from Sage and subsequently Talis Learning, I participated actively in community-of-practice activity as the merged organisation found its footing, bringing the same instinct for shared standards and peer learning into a new context.
Outcome: A consulting methodology at enherent that supported consistent delivery across multiple concurrent client engagements. A BA practice at HTSC with shared standards, a common language, and a professional development infrastructure built by the community itself. A Product CoP at National Trust co-founded and running. A pattern of community-building that has followed me across every organisation I have worked in.
Want to discuss a specific challenge?
Every engagement is different. If you would like to talk through something that does not fit neatly into the above, I am happy to have that conversation.