Colart: Turning three merged teams into one delivery unit through workflow design
The challenge
After Colart merged its Global Marketing, Development, and Business Intelligence teams, the new Digital Team lacked alignment, communication channels, and consistent delivery, stalling key transformation work including a new e-commerce site.
What we did
We designed agile processes for a cross-functional team, aligned Jira workflows to how the business actually worked, established clear communication channels, matured the backlog to cut downtime, used data to guide prioritisation, and escalated critical issues to senior leadership when needed.
// run against The Tenhaw Way, published in full and free to adopt without engaging us
The outcome
The Digital Team became cohesive and predictable, transformation work progressed consistently, and the e-commerce website shipped successfully.
Limits, and what is withheld
What transfers is that an agent needs exactly what this merged team needed: an unambiguous definition of a piece of work, a state model to move it through, and somewhere to escalate when it cannot. What does not transfer is the technology. This was process, workflow and backlog design, and there is no AI anywhere in the deliverable.
Why a buyer usually lands on this one
Written for the person arriving mid-programme with a question.
A merger produces an org chart, not a team
Global Marketing, Development and Business Intelligence became a Digital Team by announcement. What was missing was mundane and decisive: a shared definition of a piece of work, a workflow matching how the business actually operated, and a channel where a decision could be made rather than restated.
Every organisation attempting agentic change hits the same wall in a smaller form. An agent needs an unambiguous definition of the work, a state model it can move things through, and somewhere to escalate. Teams that have never agreed those between humans cannot hand them to software.
Workflow is the interface
The Jira workflows were aligned to how the business worked rather than to a template, and the backlog was matured to the point that the team stopped waiting on itself. That sounds like administration. It is the interface layer.
When a buyer asks an AI implementation partner why their pilot never widened, the answer is frequently here: the work the agent was given had no stable representation outside a conversation, so nothing could be measured, routed or handed back.
What this engagement does not claim
The same caveats the case studies hub carries, narrowed to this engagement so nothing here is a surprise to your analyst.
- 01
Not an AI engagement.
Agile process design, workflow design and prioritisation. No models, no agents.
- 02
The e-commerce build was the client's.
We designed the processes and workflows the team delivered through, and escalated what needed escalating. The platform itself was built by Colart's Digital Team.
Other engagements
Sector first, because that is the next question. All twelve are on the hub, grouped into the two we would call AI work and the ten we would not.
Landing the Discovery+ launch on a CEO-set deadline
6, development teams on the launch, one of them the visual rebrand team James ran
Making a pandemic-era app team predictable, and trusted again
2, squads: Mobile App and Integration
Coordinating five agile teams through a £1bn e-commerce re-platform
£1bn, re-platforming programme
See how we did it
A real engagement walked through by the person who led it, then the same method applied to yours.
- The ways of working, published in full and free to adopt without hiring us.
- The target operating model James co-led at HSBC: designed and piloted for 500 teams, with global rollout due in 2026 and not yet rolled out.
- The AI build inside a live London specialty insurer: a working proof of concept, month by month, with the client anonymised to a market.
Everything the call covers about our work is already published on this site. What it adds is the person who did that work, and your own situation put through the same method.
The 30-minute discovery call starts with your problem. This one starts with our work.
Pick a time on cal.comWant the same thing, in your organisation?
A 30-minute call with James Rooney. We will tell you which parts of this we have done before and which we would be doing for the first time, and you will leave with a rough scope either way.
most start with a fixed-price AI Readiness Audit · £30k–£90k · 6–8 weeks
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