Stabilising Product Delivery and Preparing for In-House Ownership

Engagement

Product Leadership • Product Stabilisation • Delivery Governance • Operating Model Transition

The Challenge

The product supported a broad range of clinical settings, including general practices, specialist rooms, private emergency departments and occupational health providers. Product reliability was central to customer confidence and the business’s ability to pursue growth in Australia.

The organisation needed to address immediate stability concerns while preparing to take development in-house on fixed handover dates. This required clearer evidence, priorities and operational responsibilities within a limited timeframe.

Challenges included:

• Practices running different product versions across a range of hosting environments
• Performance feedback that was largely anecdotal, making diagnosis and prioritisation difficult
• No production-equivalent environment for validating releases
• Early planning maturity and limited stakeholder visibility of team priorities and capacity
• A development transition that needed to account for ongoing customer and operational commitments
• Limited shared reporting on the Australian customer base
• A CRM platform that was under-delivering on value, with data quality limiting confidence in reporting

Objectives

The engagement focused on:

• Replacing anecdotal performance reports with measured diagnosis
• Defining a staged path towards a single stable, supported product version
• Connecting team priorities and capacity to outcome-based OKRs
• Strengthening incident management and operational readiness
• Supporting the transition from offshore to in-house development
• Giving leadership a clearer view of the Australian market
• Structuring CRM improvements around user needs and business value

My Approach

I treated the engagement as a focused intervention with a clear end point. Success meant leaving behind practices and decision-making structures that the permanent organisation could continue to own.

I worked across product, engineering, customer success, finance, people, security and leadership. The work addressed immediate stabilisation alongside the operating foundations needed for in-house development.

My approach centred on:

1. Establishing evidence before committing to solutions. I supported production measurement and a documented root-cause diagnosis, with peer review before findings were presented to leadership.
2. Sequencing stabilisation around customer risk. I shaped a pilot-then-waves upgrade strategy, grouping practices by hosting environment and version, with monitoring and hypercare periods.
3. Connecting outcomes to everyday delivery. I introduced an Objective → Key Result → Feature hierarchy in Azure DevOps, supported by two-week iterations and explicit capacity allocation.
4. Making governance useful for decisions. I reshaped product reviews around value, priorities and decisions, and established structured leadership updates on release progress.
5. Building foundations others could sustain. I introduced reusable incident reporting, shared market reporting and cross-functional discovery practices to support ongoing ownership.

Activities Delivered

Product stabilisation and delivery leadership

• Led the teams, with accountability for OKR and KPI delivery and technical decisions within their scope
• Defined OKRs focused on stability visibility and rebuilding trust with the most affected Australian customers
• Supported root-cause diagnosis using production measurements, documented findings and peer review
• Shaped a stability release and a staged upgrade strategy intended to bring practices onto a single supported version
• Introduced an OKR-linked backlog, two-week iterations and capacity allocation across stability, customer commitments and business-as-usual work

Governance and operational readiness

• Reshaped product reviews into a forum for value and decisions, supported by a stakeholder map
• Established structured leadership updates on release progress
• Acted as Incident Response Lead and introduced a standard incident report and register
• Started cross-functional planning for an after-hours on-call model with people, security and leadership stakeholders
• Supported planning for the transition from offshore to in-house development

Business visibility and CRM value

• Built and published a “State of the Australian Market” dashboard for the whole organisation, with clear source-of-truth and terminology rules
• Structured HubSpot discovery around the jobs to be done across Sales and Marketing, Customer Success and Customer Engagement
• Developed a value-versus-effort roadmap for CRM improvements
• Reset the CRM implementation partner relationship towards a partnership model and established a data-quality initiative
• Launched a monthly lunch-and-learn programme designed for staff to take ownership over time

Results

The engagement created practical improvements in diagnosis, planning, visibility and operational consistency. It also established a defined path for further stabilisation and transition work.

Before	After
Performance problems were reported largely through anecdote	Causes were measured on production systems, peer-reviewed and documented in an executive brief
Practices operated across multiple versions and hosting environments	A stability release and staged upgrade strategy provided a defined path towards one supported version
Team priorities and capacity had limited visibility	An OKR-linked backlog, planning cadence and explicit capacity allocation made work and trade-offs visible
Product reviews focused on showcasing activity	Reviews were reshaped around value and decisions
The Australian customer base had limited shared visibility	A market dashboard was published to the whole organisation
CRM dissatisfaction lacked a structured diagnosis	User-needs discovery and a value-versus-effort roadmap provided a basis for prioritising improvements
Incident handling varied	A standard incident report and register supported a more consistent response and review process

The greatest improvement was the move towards evidence-led, structured decision-making. Leadership and the team gained a shared basis for discussing product stability, customer priorities and delivery commitments.

The release and upgrade strategy established the path forward; completion of all practice upgrades and the in-house transition remained subsequent delivery milestones.

Lessons Learned

Short engagements need a clear definition of done

A tactical engagement creates lasting value when it leaves behind foundations others can operate. Setting that expectation early helped me focus on reusable practices, clear responsibilities and decisions that could outlast my involvement.

Evidence changes the conversation

Production measurement gave leadership and the team a shared basis for discussing performance issues. It made diagnosis more credible and prioritisation more grounded.

Structure has to fit the team

Planning practices worked best when they matched the team’s current maturity and working style. A usable hierarchy, regular cadence and visible capacity allocation provided a practical starting point.

Product stability creates the conditions for growth

A credible growth strategy depends on confidence in the product customers already rely on. Defining the stabilisation path helped clarify the sequence of work needed before renewed growth activity.

Reflection

This engagement reinforced my view that leadership during a transition depends on creating clarity about the current situation, the decisions that matter and who will carry the work forward.

The most valuable contribution was a shared foundation for action: evidence the organisation could trust, priorities the team could work from and practices that could continue beyond the contract.

A tactical engagement succeeds when the structures it leaves behind keep working after it ends.

Skills Demonstrated

• Product and technology leadership
• OKR design and delivery
• Product stabilisation strategy
• Delivery governance and capacity planning
• Incident management
• Operating model design
• Vendor transition planning
• Executive stakeholder engagement
• Data-informed decision-making
• CRM value realisation
• Cross-functional facilitation

Technologies

• Azure DevOps
• Confluence
• HubSpot CRM
• SQL Server-based practice management platform
• Production telemetry
• Microsoft Teams

Key Takeaway

Combining measured diagnosis, staged delivery planning and practical governance gave Medtech Global a clearer path towards a stable product and stronger foundations for in-house development.