Northwestern Mutual (NM), a Fortune 500 financial services company, turned to Atlassian to revamp their enterprise project portfolio management.
About Northwestern Mutual
- Founded in 1857
- Mutual company owned by policyholders
- Long-term planning mindset affects how the company manages projects, expenses, and reserves
- Focused on generating value for policy holders
Jira Align and Jira form the foundation of NM’s Sustained Funding Initiative.
Jira Align promotes better project prioritization, clarity, and transparency, as well as increased confidence in execution and outcome realization
Northwestern Mutual’s Challenge: Limited transparency in the enterprise portfolio management process
Historically, Northwestern Mutual used a project portfolio process that resulted in disconnects between team demand and team supply. Each year on the demand side, as part of the Annual Funding Cycle, a project prioritization committee reviewed, ranked, and approved business cases submitted by various teams. The approved projects, however, were not linked to the capacity available in the teams that would carry out the work. This led to a lack of transparency in the enterprise portfolio management process.
When you go through this period where things aren’t totally transparent between you as a value delivery organization and your business partner, trust starts to break down.
Jimmy Mei, Senior Director of Program Management, Northwestern Mutual
The Transformation: Northwestern Mutual’s Sustained Funding Initiative
In 2022, Northwestern Mutual adopted the Sustained Funding Initiative to connect outcomes with its multi-year strategy. The Sustained Funding Initiative is designed to prioritize demand within constrained budgets, align supply with demand, and provide greater transparency.
One of the expected benefits of the Sustained Funding Initiative is a rebuilding of trust. When there isn’t total transparency between the value delivery organization and the business partner, trust starts to break down.
Jimmy Mei, Senior Director of Program Management, Northwestern Mutual
A key component of the Sustained Funding Initiative was transitioning away from a project taxonomy to a new way to talk about their demand, which they called “Investable Structures.” Investable Structures are organized into three categories:
| Business Driven | Advance the company’s transformation agenda, improving the customer and field experience |
| Corporate Driven | Support company operations |
| Tech Driven | Facilitate technology “hygiene” activities |
Northwestern Mutual leverages the Investable Structures taxonomy to create transparency into demand versus supply:
- Demand for technology delivery teams is organized into a set of Investable Structures with their own set of objectives and key results (OKRs).
- Those OKRs tie to a Jira Align epic roadmap of planned epics which are prioritized and decomposed into features. This provides visibility into which delivery teams are needed and what that means from an estimated capacity perspective.
- As teams complete stories and deliver value back to the Investable Structures, the full circle of what was planned and what was completed is made transparent.
The Payoff: Continuous integration from story execution to strategic planning
At Northwestern Mutual, Atlassian Jira and Jira Align create a “spine” that provides continuous integration and linkages from story execution at the team level all the way up to strategic planning at the Investable Structure level.
On the demand side, Investable Structures are implemented in Jira Align. All Investable Structures manage their themes, objectives, and epics within their Investable Structure portfolio and program. The Investable Structure is listed as the primary program on the epics.
| On the Demand Side… | On the Supply Side… |
| Investable Structures are implemented in Jira Align | Delivery programs break down epics into features |
| All Investable Structures manage their themes, objectives, and epics within their Investable Structure portfolio and program | Delivery teams break features into stories in Jira |
| The Investable Structure is listed as the primary program on the epics | |
| Delivery programs are added as additional programs to the Investable Structure epics | |
| Jira Align is the source of record for themes, epics, OKRs, and features | |
Portfolio Hub provides forward- and backward-looking insights into the value delivery flow
Northwestern Mutual’s Portfolio Hub serves as its enterprise portfolio management insights platform. This Power BI tool utilizes data from Jira Align and Jira, as well as the company’s HR and financial systems. Portfolio Hub is used in combination with Jira Align during the annual planning process.
Mix in Jira Align, Jira data, HR data, finance data, stir it up, you get really cool stuff.
Jimmy Mei, Senior Director of Program Management, Northwestern Mutual
| Portfolio Hub: Looking Ahead Views | |
| Supply or Demand-Driven Roadmap | Epic roadmaps visible either by the demand side (investable structure) or supply side (delivery program/portfolio) |
| Estimate Cost by Structure | Estimated cost by Investable Structure based on planned epics and estimates |
| Supply-Side Capacity Insight | Supply insights show how much effort is required on an epic by program/portfolio, including whether that program is over capacity based on estimated work |
| Understand Backlog Health | Backlog Health views show how much work is in program/team backlogs, including the type of work and how many weeks of backlog are planned out |
Backlog Health drives interesting conversations about the handoffs in the value delivery flow, as we set goals and create more context around why we are doing the work.
Jimmy Mei, Senior Director of Program Management, Northwestern Mutual
| Portfolio Hub: Looking Back Views | |
| Effort Transparency | Effort Transparency views show what work was completed (Jira stories) over a given period, how much capacity was directed toward it, and what type of work it was |
| Financial “Show Back” Views | Financial “Show Back” views translate teams’ completed work into cost assumptions based on the program cost and story estimates |
Effort Transparency shines a light on areas where we don’t have consistent process execution. We get clear insights into teams that are mostly working on tech stuff, and we can drill into why they aren’t working on business projects and the transformation agenda.
James Mei, Senior Director of Program Management, Northwestern Mutual
What’s Next?
Looking ahead, Northwestern Mutual hopes to enhance its enterprise project portfolio management model in three ways:
| Enhancements to Northwestern Mutual’s Enterprise Project Portfolio Model | |
| Flow Metrics and Standard Value Streams | Standardized value stream processes at the epic, feature, and story levels will generate insights about where work is getting stuck |
| New Views to Support Release Train Engineers and Product/Program Managers | Activates insights for specific personas in the value delivery machine |
| Derived Health | Business rules providing insights into the health of an objective or epic based on factors like work estimated for the duration of the epic, the number of decomposed features, how burndown looks, etc. |
Conclusion
Northwestern Mutual now has greater transparency into its enterprise portfolio management process. Thanks to insights based on an integrated spine of data across Jira Align and Jira, the company better understands how completed work supports its strategic objectives, which projects need interventions to keep them on track, and much more.