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Bridge Strategy to Delivery
Expert Insights from the Frontline of Transformation
Discover how leading UK enterprises are closing the gap between strategic vision and delivery execution. Real stories. Real metrics. Real results.
Insights Used By 117+ Organisations Across Financial Services, Gaming, Government & More
Authors With 50+ Years Combined Delivery Transformation Experience
Proven Results £13Bn+ Delivered Through Insights-Led Transformation
Featured This Month
Why Product-Led Growth (PLG) Fails in Big UK Organisations - and How to Do It Properly
Most UK enterprises want the outcomes of product-led growth - lower CAC, faster scaling, stronger retention - but very few want the operating-model surgery required to achieve it.
PLG isn’t a tactic or a funnel. It’s a multi-stage organisational journey that demands new teams, new governance, modern architecture and genuine autonomy.
Here’s how to do it properly.
6 days ago7 min read
AI Isn’t a Bubble-It’s a Wildfire. And We’re Already in It.
People often reach for metaphors when faced with uncertainty. It is a world-old instinct: to make sense of the unknown we compare it to what we already understand.
Lately, my entire feed seems to be holding onto one such metaphor - the idea that AI is a bubble about to burst. Maybe. I should say I respect the provenance of the “bubble” metaphor - it comes from decades of market cycles and hard-earned lessons about hype
Nov 205 min read
Competing with the Big Boys & Girls: Building an AI Centre of Excellence
For years small companies have been fast and nimble whilst larger firms are slow to adopt new approaches, but an uncomfortable truth about AI adoption is that large enterprises have the resources and dedicated teams to drive rapid transformation. The scale of benefit they can achieve is huge and has therefore made it a real focus for them. Smaller firms, by contrast, often struggle to give AI innovation the sustained focus and bandwidth it will need if they want to stay ahead
Nov 183 min read
Read by Topic
Strategy & Leadership
For CTOs, COOs, CPOs navigating transformation. How to align strategy with execution, lead through change, and build sustainable delivery capability.
Featured Post:
Delivery Excellence
For Scrum Masters, Delivery Leads, Agile Coaches. Practical frameworks to improve predictability, eliminate waste, and build high-performing teams.
Featured Post:
Product Thinking
For Product Managers, Product Owners, Product Directors, and CPOs. Move from output focus to outcome focus. Build products customers actually want to use.
Featured Post:
Scaling & Transformation
For enterprise leaders scaling delivery. Frameworks for SAFe, team topologies, portfolio governance. How to maintain agility at scale without bureaucracy.
Featured Post:
Culture &
Teams
For HR, Team Leads, and People Leaders. Build fundamental trust, psychological safety, and essential accountability. The critical human side of transformation.
Featured Post:
All Insights
If Everyone’s Busy, Why Are We Still Behind?
In many mid-sized product organisations, busyness has become a proxy for progress. But full roadmaps, maxed-out teams, and delivery velocity aren't translating into market impact or innovation. This article breaks down why - revealing how systemic misfocus, fractured prioritisation, and reactive product roles are silently killing your speed. Learn how to rewire your operating model to shift from motion to momentum.
Darren Emery
Jul 215 min read
Leading Through Uncertainty with Strategic Agility
When the terrain is uncertain, a detailed plan won’t save you - but clarity of intent might. This article explores how the best execs lead through complexity using strategic agility, intent-based leadership, and a deep understanding of how decisions are made when there are no right answers.
Darren Emery
Jul 145 min read
Fixing the Feedback Loops that Actually Drive Performance
Dashboards don’t drive decisions - feedback loops do. If your teams are waiting weeks for reports and months for action, you’re not data-driven… you’re delay-driven. Here’s how to fix the loops that actually move the needle.
Darren Emery
Jul 74 min read
Stop Optimising Yesterday: How to Fund the Future Without Burning Today
Most teams aren’t failing to deliver. They’re just delivering the past.
This post reimagines the Three Horizons of Product Delivery - showing you how to balance innovation, scale, and stability before your roadmap becomes a liability.
Darren Emery
Jun 305 min read
Tech Debt is a Leadership Problem
Tech debt doesn’t begin in the codebase - it begins in the boardroom. This article exposes how leadership decisions, delayed investments, and strategic neglect create delivery drag across your organisation. If 40% of your tech budget is lost to invisible friction, it's time to rethink who really owns the problem.
Darren Emery
Jun 234 min read
Capability Before Capacity
Organisations often respond to delivery pressure by adding more teams - but without the right capabilities in place, this only scales dysfunction. In this article, we explore why capability must come before capacity, how to identify the real constraints in your system, and what to do instead of defaulting to headcount growth.
Darren Emery
Jun 164 min read
The Agile Industrial Complex
Agile was never meant to be a playbook - but that's exactly what it's become. In our latest article, we explore how the Agile Industrial Complex turned a mindset into merchandise, and what leaders can do to reclaim agility as a principle-driven, outcome-focused way of working. If your teams are running the rituals but not seeing the results, this one’s for you.
Darren Emery
Jun 95 min read
The Portfolio Fallacy
Most portfolio frameworks promise scale - but end up scaling everything except focus. This article exposes the traps that turn strategic ambition into delivery chaos, and shows how to shift from overloaded backlogs to outcome-driven clarity. If your portfolio looks impressive on paper but underwhelms in practice, this one’s for you.
Darren Emery
Jun 25 min read
Team Topologies Meets Enterprise Reality
Most org charts look like neat boxes, but the real flow of work resembles a tangled subway/tube/metro map - overlapping lines, hidden bottlenecks, and missed connections. To deliver at scale, you need more than structure. You need flow by design.
Darren Emery
May 265 min read
Backlog as a Crime Scene
Step into the average digital programme, and the backlog tells a story - but it’s less of a roadmap and more of a crime scene. Bloated lists, zombie tickets, and vague tasks reveal deeper organisational issues. In this article, we’ll play detective, examining the evidence to uncover what your backlog says about your culture - and how to fix it.
Darren Emery
May 195 min read
Strategy is Not a Backlog
In many organisations, strategy has lost its way. It’s been reduced to a budgeting exercise — a list of projects, initiatives, or key priorities vaguely tied to ambition but completely detached from strategic logic. This transformation from intent to task leaves delivery teams overwhelmed and disconnected, working through endless backlogs without a clear sense of purpose.
But strategy isn’t just a shopping list of work to be done. It’s a singular, integrated set of choices.
Darren Emery
May 127 min read
Confessions of an agile obsessive!
I have a problem. It’s quite serious and it affects me everyday. I can’t seem to watch a TV programme without trying to find some (usually tenuous) way to connect it to product delivery and Agile. It’s an illness; I can’t stop. I’m not just ruining my own life, it’s spreading to my loved ones. My wife recently yelled at a team on Australian MasterChef: “Why don’t they test one fully made burger first? That’s Agile!” (*I guess this means she can’t leave me now) I don’
Abbas Dhanani
May 93 min read
Why You Can’t Scale Delivery Without Focused Leadership
Your organisation can’t move faster than your leadership’s ability to focus. While most execs chase headcount, tools, or structure, the real constraint is attention. This article explores why executive focus - not effort - is the hidden bottleneck in enterprise transformation, and how to reclaim it as your organisation’s most strategic asset.
Darren Emery
May 54 min read
Product-Led Transformation in a Project-Heavy World
Why speed, structure, and customer obsession are the new currency of value. Which direction is your Organisation heading? Why This Article Matters If your organisation can’t pivot quickly, your competitors will - and when they do, they’ll win. It’s not a scare tactic. It’s the reality facing any executive trying to deliver value through slow, static, project-led ways of working. The world isn’t waiting. Neither should you. The Imperative of Product Transformation Let’s not su
Darren Emery
Apr 284 min read
Delivery Theatre: The Illusion of Progress That’s Slowing You Down
In today’s enterprises, delivery often looks busy but achieves little. Delivery Theatre explores the illusion of progress created by rehearsed rituals, vanity metrics, and agile-by-numbers. From Jira-driven busyness to transformation-by-slide-deck, this article unpacks why organisations confuse activity with outcomes—and how to break free from performative delivery to focus on real customer value, measurable impact, and strategic alignment.
Darren Emery
Apr 215 min read
The Pep Talk: Why Every Daily Stand-Up Needs a Bit of Guardiola
I’ve written my thoughts previously on why I hate daily stand-ups. Not because they can’t be valuable, but because they almost never are. As a former professional athlete, I’ve always been obsessed with what makes teams perform at their best - both on the pitch and in the boardroom. Even though my playing days are behind me, that drive for peak performance fuels the way I support corporate teams and help build products that excel under pressure. I’m constantly drawn to the b
Darren Emery
Apr 74 min read
The Evolution of SCRUM MASTERS:
How the Scrum Master role is evolving in the modern enterprise and how your organisation can be first mover to take advantage
Darren Emery
Nov 25, 20243 min read
Who are you voting/rooting for today?
Are you imagining "What can be, unburdened by what has been"? Or are the margins “Too Big to Rig.” Whichever side of the fence you are on, the winner of today’s election will be the team that has best aligned their activities with their strategic goals. In 2012 for Obama’s re-election campaign, his team used a data-driven approach to set clear objectives and measures to track progress against them. Increasing younger voter turnout was one such objective, and the measures incl
Darren Emery
Nov 5, 20242 min read
OKRs for Leadership
Over the past twenty years the corporate world has seen significant change influenced by digital technology which has revolutionised the way that companies operate. Globalisation has led to increased complexity navigating different markets, each with their own regulatory environments and cultural values, and the pace of external, societal change has led to challenges predicting future trends. Companies have access to more data than ever before, but whilst access has increased
Darren Emery
Oct 23, 20243 min read
Are You the Puppet Master or the puppet?
Jira, love it or hate it? Either way, for a lot of organisations it’s necessary; it’s the main tool that development teams use to (1) track their work and for (2) stakeholders to understand whether the company is delivering the right value. If your company is doing both of those things, in a way that’s not burdensome to the teams - and - in a way that is both simple for stakeholders, then you don’t need to read this article. Rate yourself using the Jira20 below and see what
Abbas Dhanani
Oct 11, 20243 min read
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