Client
The Hanover Insurance Group
Market / Industry
Insurance and Financial Services
Offerings
Product Operating Model (POM) Consulting, Executive Workshops, Roadmapping
Challenge
As The Hanover Insurance Group continued evolving its technology and business delivery capabilities, leadership recognized the need to move beyond traditional project management toward a Product Operating Model that better aligned investments with customer outcomes and long-term business value.
The organization sought to:
- Transition from project-based funding and delivery to product-centric value delivery
- Improve alignment between business strategy and execution
- Better organize teams around customer value
- Establish governance and operating practices that support continuous product delivery
- Create a shared understanding of what a Product Operating Model would mean across leadership, product, portfolio, operations, and PMO organizations
To successfully make this transition, Hanover required both executive alignment and a structured assessment of its current operating model before launching broader organizational change.
Solution
LitheSpeed partnered with Hanover to deliver a structured Product Operating Model engagement consisting of an executive education workshop followed by a collaborative organizational discovery session.
Executive Product Operating Model Workshop
LitheSpeed facilitated an interactive workshop designed to equip leaders with the knowledge required to successfully lead a product-centric transformation. Participants explored:
- The three dimensions of a Product Operating Model: Culture, Process, and Structure
- Five foundational concepts:
- Product Culture
- Product Strategy
- Product Teams
- Product Discovery
- Product Delivery
- Practical approaches for aligning teams around customer value
- Common transformation challenges and strategies for sustaining organizational change
Product Operating Model Discovery
Following the workshop, LitheSpeed conducted a facilitated discovery session to assess Hanover's readiness for Product Operating Model adoption.
Working collaboratively with stakeholders, the team:
- Aligned on the strategic purpose of moving from projects to products
- Developed Customer Profiles identifying customer needs, pain points, and opportunities
- Created Value Maps connecting products and services to measurable customer outcomes
- Assessed existing processes, governance, organizational structures, and tooling
- Developed an initial crosswalk from the current operating model to a future-state Product Operating Model
Transformational Roadmap
The engagement produced a practical roadmap that addressed:
- Product governance
- Ways of working (Scrum, Kanban, and hybrid delivery models)
- Organizational roles and responsibilities
- Product management practices
- Customer discovery approaches
- Backlog creation and prioritization
- Technology enablement, including Planview AgilePlace and related collaboration tools
Results & Impact
The engagement established the strategic foundation necessary for Hanover's Product Operating Model transformation.
Key deliverables included:
- Executive alignment around a shared Product Operating Model vision
- A current-state organizational readiness assessment
- Customer Profiles and Value Maps linking organizational capabilities to customer outcomes
- An initial transformation roadmap with prioritized next steps
- A crosswalk identifying the organizational, governance, process, and tooling changes required to successfully transition from projects to products
- A common language and framework for future product transformation initiatives
By aligning stakeholders early and defining a clear transformation path, LitheSpeed positioned Hanover to confidently evolve toward a customer-centric Product Operating Model that improves strategic alignment, accelerates value delivery, and enables continuous adaptation in a rapidly changing insurance market.
