Customer Challenge

A major financial institution, undergoing a significant modernization initiative, faced the critical challenge of enhancing its existing Project Management Office (PMO) capabilities to effectively manage its project portfolio. Despite having a structured approach, the PMO's ability to drive timely business case realization for key initiatives was severely hampered by persistent resourcing issues. These included prolonged internal hiring cycles, inconsistent quality and accountability from third-party vendors, and difficulties in retaining skilled project managers. To overcome these obstacles and ensure responsiveness to fluctuating business demands, the institution urgently needed a strategic sourcing partner capable of implementing a flexible, SLA-driven resourcing model that would deliver both cost predictability and enhanced agility.

Navitas Solution

To address the institution's needs, Navitas implemented a responsive and flexible staffing service, coupled with a robust resource management office to bolster the PMO. This strategic partnership ensured that high-quality resources, including project/program managers, analysts, coordinators, agile coaches, and scrum masters, were allocated to projects and programs in a timely and cost-effective manner, significantly enhancing PMO capabilities. Our current 30-member team delivered programs across diverse portfolios, leveraging a spectrum of methodologies such as waterfall, iterative, Kanban, Agile, Scrumfall, and SAFe. We effectively managed hybrid project/program environments (combining agile and waterfall), providing expert coaching to project teams to support the institution's journey towards agile transformation. Beyond delivery, our PMO team members acted as change agents, driving compliance with the institution's established processes and methodologies. A single point of contact streamlined all stakeholder engagement, facilitating governance setup, team management, target state solution structuring, and partial delivery responsibilities.

Result

By partnering with Navitas, the financial institution successfully transformed its PMO, directly addressing its critical resourcing challenges and significantly accelerating its modernization initiative. The implementation of Navitas's SLA-driven flexible resourcing model led to a demonstrable reduction in internal hiring cycles, moving from prolonged periods to efficient, timely resource allocation. This strategic shift mitigated the previous issues of variable quality and accountability from third-party vendors by providing consistently high-caliber project managers, analysts, and agile specialists.

The direct result was a marked improvement in the timely business case realization of key initiatives, which were previously hindered by resource bottlenecks. Navitas's ability to seamlessly integrate a 30-member team capable of navigating diverse methodologies (waterfall, agile, hybrid) ensured that projects progressed without the previous delays. Furthermore, the embedded agile coaching and change management efforts drove greater compliance with the institution's processes, fostering a more mature and adaptable project delivery environment. This comprehensive solution not only delivered cost predictability and enhanced agility but also cultivated a stable, high-performing PMO, directly resolving the core problems identified in the customer challenge and empowering the institution to achieve its modernization goals more effectively.