Strategy Execution: Aligning Global Teams at NCC

Project Background

Over an 18-month engagement, McKenna Agile Consultants partnered with NCC Group as part of their ongoing transformation. Our focus was the Global Technical Services department, where we facilitated six quarterly Big Room Planning sessions to bring teams together around a clear strategic roadmap and the deliverables that matter most. Aligned to their area Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and alongside this cadence, we provided agile strategy execution guidance and team coaching, and we ran a series of Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) workshops with leaders from across the organisation to create a pipeline of high-impact, strategic work. The Big Room Planning events were delivered in a hybrid format, with some people in the room and others joining from around the world. The WSJF sessions were delivered in person.

The Challenge

NCC Group faced a familiar set of constraints for a global function with ambitious goals:

• Finite capacity across multiple workstreams, making focus essential
• Competing priorities that needed a robust, transparent way to decide what to do first
• Limited visibility of progress across teams and time zones
• Inconsistent prioritisation without a shared, objective method
• Hybrid ways of working that required inclusive facilitation to align on the same plan

In short, the department needed a dependable operating rhythm that connected strategy to execution, improved transparency, and ensured that scarce capacity landed on the highest-value work.

The Solution

We introduced a pragmatic, people-centred approach that combined their existing OKRs, agile planning, strategy execution practices, and hands-on team coaching.

1) Quarterly Big Room Planning, built for hybrid

• Designed and facilitated six enterprise-scale planning events that aligned teams and leaders to quarterly outcomes and dependencies
• Established a repeatable event flow: strategy and roadmap playback, capacity shaping, dependency mapping, risk assessment, plan review, and confidence voting
• Produced clear artefacts each quarter, including a visible plan of intent, dependency boards, and risk registers with owners and due dates

2) WSJF as the standard for prioritisation

• Ran multiple in-person WSJF workshops with cross-functional leaders to score initiatives against consistent definitions of user and business value, time criticality, risk reduction/opportunity enablement and job size
• Built an initial portfolio backlog using WSJF scores as the decision lens, helping leaders say yes to the right work and no to the rest
• Documented scoring guardrails and examples to keep the method fair, fast and repeatable

3) Strategy execution playbook and team coaching

• Created a light-weight playbook that set out the quarterly cadence, roles, ceremonies, and check-in rhythm, ensuring the plan did not stall after the event
• Coached product and delivery leads to run effective weekly and monthly reviews so progress, risks and decisions stayed visible
• Provided facilitation toolkits and readiness checklists to make hybrid participation inclusive and productive

“McKenna Agile Consultants helped us turn strategy into execution we could feel week to week. Their hybrid Big Room Planning aligned global teams, WSJF made prioritisation objective, and their team coaching built a repeatable cadence. We now make faster decisions, see progress across workstreams, and focus scarce capacity on the highest-impact work. Pragmatic, collaborative partners who fit our culture and get results.”

Adam Lee, Director of Transformation Change and Delivery, NCC Group

Delivery

Across 18 months we delivered a consistent rhythm that improved alignment and focus:

• Six hybrid Big Room Planning events that connected strategy to work in a single shared plan, with clear ownership and confidence levels
• In-person WSJF workshops that established a common, objective prioritisation framework and produced a ranked pipeline of strategic initiatives
• Ongoing agile coaching to embed the operating rhythm, strengthen leadership facilitation, and maintain transparency of progress between events

This combination helped NCC Group’s Global Technical Services department concentrate scarce capacity on the highest-impact initiatives, increase visibility across workstreams, and make faster, more confident decisions. The result was a clear, repeatable cadence for agile strategy execution that teams could trust.

If you would like a similar outcome for your organisation, get in touch and we will shape a planning and coaching approach that fits your context.

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