From a Project Mindset to a Product Operating Rhythm
FMG had made a bold move: transitioning from a traditional project structure to a product-based operating model. New leadership and delivery roles, including Product Owners, Product Managers and Pillar Leads, were in place. The next step was to mature the way strategy translated into execution, with stronger alignment between priorities, delivery capacity and cross-functional planning.
FMG partnered with Radically to establish and embed a Quarterly Planning approach, anchored by Big Room Planning. The work was bigger than standing up an event. It was about helping leaders and teams build the behaviours, practices and operating rhythms required to move from a project mindset to a genuinely product-led organisation.
Across the engagement, Radically worked alongside leadership, product and delivery teams to co-design and progressively mature FMG’s planning capability, culminating in a Big Room Planning event with more than 185 participants.
Challenge
FMG was navigating a period of significant organisational change. The shift toward a product-based operating model had created strong momentum, but planning and delivery practices were still evolving. Prioritisation, dependency management and capacity-based planning were maturing at different speeds across teams.
At the leadership level, the gap was most acute between strategic intent and what was actually getting delivered. Existing planning approaches couldn’t provide the visibility, coordination or trade-off conversations the organisation needed at scale.
The challenge wasn’t dropping in a new planning event. It was changing how strategy, planning and delivery connected together.
Overview
Approach
Implementation
Radically didn’t arrive with a rigid framework. We partnered closely with FMG to co-design the first iteration of Big Room Planning, then progressively matured the capability across multiple planning cycles. The work was built on co-creation, practical experimentation and capability uplift.
Phase one focused on standing up the inaugural BRP:
- Designing and facilitating FMG’s first Big Room Planning experience
- Working with Pillar Leads, Product Managers and Product Owners to prepare planning inputs and backlogs
- Introducing approaches and templates for organising a Big Room Planning event and aligning prioritisation, dependency management and capacity-based planning across the organisation
- Coaching teams and leaders on planning readiness and collaborative planning behaviours
- Supporting teams to surface dependencies and capacity constraints with confidence
As the engagement evolved, the focus shifted toward embedding sustainable planning capability across the organisation. A key part of the work involved helping leadership connect strategic intent to delivery outcomes through:
- Quarterly objective setting and prioritisation
- Improved cross-functional alignment and decision making
- Greater transparency of trade-offs and delivery constraints
- Building stronger planning and facilitation capability within internal teams
Importantly, the engagement was designed to gradually transition ownership to FMG leaders, ensuring the capability could continue to scale beyond Radically’s involvement.
The Shift
The most significant shift wasn’t operational, it was strategic. Planning moved from being a coordination exercise to a genuine strategic alignment capability.
Leaders started shifting the conversation from “what needs to be delivered” to “why it matters” and how the work connected to broader organisational priorities. Pillar Leads and delivery leaders developed deeper ownership of strategic outcomes, which lifted the quality of prioritisation discussions across the board.
Big Room Planning also unlocked stronger organisational visibility and collaboration. Teams that had historically planned in silos began identifying dependencies earlier, surfacing risks more transparently and making clearer trade-off decisions together.
Alongside the operational shift, a broader cultural change emerged. Initial resistance and uncertainty around new ways of working gradually evolved into engagement, curiosity and leadership advocacy. FMG’s existing culture of care, curiosity and learning became a powerful enabler for sustainable change.
Outcomes
By the end of the engagement, FMG had successfully established and scaled a quarterly Big Room Planning approach that brought together more than 200 participants across the organisation.
The work delivered both immediate operational improvements and longer-term organisational capability uplift:
- A repeatable Big Room Planning process and operating rhythm
- Improved visibility of priorities, dependencies and capacity
- Greater alignment between strategy and execution
- Increased planning maturity across Product Owners, Product Managers and Pillar Leads
- Stronger cross-functional collaboration and decision making
- Increased confidence in iterative planning and delivery practices
- Internal capability to continue evolving BRP, owned by FMG
Beyond the mechanics of planning, the engagement helped create stronger alignment between leadership intent and day-to-day delivery. FMG now has a stronger foundation for scaling its product operating model, supported by a more collaborative, transparent and adaptive approach to execution.
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