U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
Creating a Common Operating Picture Across Seven Teams
The Challenge
Seven teams responsible for delivering work across the organization were managing their activities through a collection of disparate spreadsheets, project plans, and team-specific processes.
Without a shared system, it was difficult to see work across teams, understand overall priorities, coordinate delivery, or consistently communicate what needed to be worked on next.
The lack of visibility also created challenges for contract management. Contractor teams operated within the broader delivery environment, but IRS leadership needed a better way to understand their work, monitor progress, and evaluate delivery against expectations.
The organization needed more than a new project-management tool. It needed a common operating picture.
What We Did
We implemented Jira and Confluence across seven teams, replacing fragmented methods of tracking work with a shared digital environment.
The implementation focused on making work visible and using that visibility to improve how the organization operated.
We:
- Established common Jira workflows and ways of working across teams.
- Migrated work from disparate spreadsheets and project plans into a shared environment.
- Created greater visibility into priorities, status, and work moving across teams.
- Improved the organization's ability to prioritize and disseminate work.
- Integrated contractor teams directly into Jira boards and delivery workflows.
- Developed reports and dashboards that gave IRS leadership greater visibility into contractor progress and performance.
- Used Confluence to improve access to shared information and support more consistent ways of working.
Rather than simply deploying Jira and Confluence, we used the technology as a foundation for standardizing execution and improving management visibility.
The Impact
The implementation created a common operating picture across seven teams, giving leadership and delivery teams a shared view of work, priorities, progress, and performance.
7 Teams
Unified Through Jira & Confluence
2 Major Contracts
Successfully Completed
Making work visible enabled the organization to standardize ways of working, improve how work was prioritized and distributed, and better coordinate execution across internal and contractor teams.
The increased visibility also strengthened contract management. By incorporating contractor work into the same workflows and providing leadership with reports and dashboards for monitoring delivery, IRS gained greater insight into contractor performance and progress.
This improved management environment contributed to the successful completion of two major contracts.
The transformation demonstrated that implementing a new system creates the most value when technology is paired with changes in visibility, processes, and management practices.
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