Intangible Innovations: Ways of Working with Mixed Maturity, Models, and Methodologies

Elevance Health is the second largest health insurance provider in the United States,[1] covering 47m members in Q2 2022[2], with 33% (15.7m) membership from their Government Business Division (GBD) which includes federal Medicare business of 2.9m members. In 2022, the GBD strategic goals included, a) decrease cost per Medicare application by 12% and b) increase net membership sales by 10K. To meet their goals the Executive Vice President of Omni-Channel Marketing partnered with the GBD Chief Operations Officer, and the Vice President of Medicare sales to sponsor the Enterprise eCommerce (eComm) initiative. With a $50m investment, the three-year roadmap for the eComm Program included creating an omni-channel sales & marketing experience, prospect re-segmenting, and prospect personalization. Foundational capabilities in scope for Phase 1 required a new software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, the re-platforming of an existing SaaS application, and enhancing existing digital sales functionality, approximately 32% of the total investment.

The Medicare sales window is federally mandated between October through December annually, which required Phase 1 to be stabilized in production by September 2022. With an 8-month delivery window, and $16m scope of work, we had a lot to do and not a lot of time.

As the Enterprise eCommerce Program Manager, I assembled a staff of approximately 200 fully allocated team members. The scope of work crossed 5 organizations, with varying execution models, and 4 different software development methodologies. However, 80% of my program team were temporary contractors. The teams were either new to each other, new to Elevance Health, or both. Organizational and team maturity was low. It was clear I needed to define a new way of working to account for the mixed maturity, models, and methodologies.

I first defined my vision - a program structure with built-in transparency, organic collaboration and zero communication lag. Organizing the delivery teams by strategic capability naturally grouped them by development team. However, aligning to capabilities alone would not solve the larger problem of mixed models and methodologies, nor foster quick collaboration among the 200+ program team. Then I began researching different organizational models, their application, benefits, and limitations. The Team of Teams model was most aligned with my vision, “the model emphasizes decentralized autonomy, meritocracy, and a sense of partnership” (Meehan & Jonker, 2018)[3]. Instead of organizing around a functional area, or a business unit, a Team of Teams creates a constellation of teams organized around a goal. Taking the team maturity and compressed delivery window into account, I couldn’t strictly follow the Team of Teams model. Therefore, I created a modified Team of Teams at the Program Layer using Guilds and Committees made up of delivery team members and program leadership. In the end, the eComm organizational structure was shaped like a bullseye. Capability aligned delivery teams created the outermost layer, guilds and committees the second layer, with executive program leadership in the center.

Source: Team of Teams, General Stanley McChrystal

Two major problems remained – aligning the various software development methodologies and the design ambiguity driven by a new technology platform. Drawing from the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), where all teams collectively plan in 10 week increments indefinitely, I proposed an adaptive delivery model. Using SAFe ceremonies, the 200+ program team collectively planned at 10-week Program Increments (PIs) and individual delivery teams used their existing methodologies[4] for day-to-day work.

By creating a modified Team of Teams and defining a structure for mixed software delivery methodologies I developed a new Adaptive Delivery Model at Elevance Health. With integrated teams of cross-functional members aligning to a shared goal with built in transparency, collaboration and significantly decreased communication lag.

Even though I left Elevance Health in June of 2022, after leading the Enterprise eCommerce program through two PIs, my Adaptive Delivery Model lived on to successfully deliver Phase 1 scope. My teams re-platformed Salesforce Marketing Cloud to an enterprise scalable instance in August 2022, enabling retargeted email marketing campaigns. They implemented Adobe Experience Platform to production in September 2022 for Medicare customer data profiling. They also created a new measurement framework by enhancing data acquisition and building a self-service business insights application for the Marketing and Sales organization. While the 2022 strategic goals will not be realized until 2023, Marketing and Sales organization will use the Phase 1 capabilities to decrease the cost per application and increase the net new membership during the annual Medicare sales period.

[1] Fortune.com/fortune500/2022/search/?f500_industry=Health%20Care%3A%20Insurance%20and%20Managed%20Care [2] https://www.elevancehealth.com/newsroom/elv-quarterly-earnings-q2-2022 [3] Meehan, W., & Jonker, K. (2018, May 30). Team Of Teams: An Emerging Organizational Model. Retrieved October 6, 2022, from, https://www.forbes.com/sites/meehanjonker/2018/05/30/team-of-teams-an-emerging-organizational-model/?sh=311389276e79 [4] i.e., Scrum, Kanban, Waterfall