From Fragmentation to Flow: How NKD Agility Helped SLB Consolidate Systems and Standardize Engineering Practice Across 800+ Teams

Client Context

SLB , a global energy technology company with thousands of engineers and product teams worldwide, had grown through decades of decentralized decision-making. The result? Chaos.

They had:

• 27 Azure DevOps/TFS “collections” (or orgs)
• Over 800 projects
• 900+ custom processes and workflows

Even teams working on the same product were using different fields, forms, and tracking systems. This made it virtually impossible for technical or business leadership to get a coherent view of delivery, performance, or investment.

The Ask: Consolidation and Standardization

SLB engaged Martin Hinshelwood from NKD Agility to lead a massive transformation initiative. The ask? Standardize processes, consolidate collections, and make collaboration across teams and locations possible—all without disrupting work.

Diagnosis: Fragmented Systems, Incoherent Reporting, Organizational Friction

Martin surfaced three root causes:

• Inconsistent process definitions: Each team had tailored their DevOps process, creating a sprawl of incompatible metadata that broke dashboards, blocked rollups, and made reporting almost meaningless at the organizational level.
• Siloed work structures: Funding and product decisions were tied to regional “technology centers,” creating duplication and misalignment across teams working on the same product.
• Poor visibility and governance: Leaders could see code flowing and features emerging but had no insight into the flow of value, obstacles, or team performance across the enterprise.

Approach: Build the Tools. Lead the Migration. Enable the Change.

Martin designed and delivered a multi-year transformation program:

• Built custom Azure DevOps migration tools: The scale of the problem demanded automation. Martin built PowerShell scripts (eventually formalized as the Azure DevOps Migration Tools) to handle process standardization and data migration.
• Created a standard process: A unified, organization-wide process was defined to support work item consistency, traceability, and governance—without forcing teams into rigid workflows.
• Led phased migrations: 800+ teams were migrated through a combination of in-place transformations and cross-collection moves. Projects were grouped into seven primary collections, down from 27.
• Enabled buy-in through mandate and coaching: Senior leadership issued a mandate for standardization, but Martin and his team negotiated with each team to ensure their needs were honored within the new system.
• Established a DevOps consulting unit: NKD Agility helped build a permanent internal team to train, coach, and support teams post-migration.

Outcomes: Control, Collaboration, and Strategic Clarity

• Reduced collections from 27 to 7: Simplified governance, administration, and license management.
• Standardized work item tracking: Enabled cross-team reporting, simplified dashboards, and made organizational flow visible.
• Enabled inner sourcing and reuse: By bringing projects into fewer collections, teams could now discover, reuse, and collaborate across shared tools and services.
• Cut infrastructure costs: Migrating from on-premise TFS to Azure DevOps Cloud eliminated data center bottlenecks and increased uptime.
• Improved delivery confidence: With consistent data and centralized visibility, CIOs, CTOs, and product leaders could now spot delivery risks early, forecast more reliably, and make more informed investment decisions.

Strategic Insight: Consolidation as a Prerequisite for Engineering Excellence

This wasn’t just a tooling change. It was a systems intervention.

Martin’s key lesson: “It’s never too late to clean up. Even if you’ve got 900 custom processes and 800 projects, the right system-level thinking—paired with automation and a mandate—can bring order and momentum back to your engineering organization.”

Why It Matters for CTOs and Engineering Leaders

• Achieving flow at scale requires architectural coherence—in process, in tooling, in reporting.
• Technical leadership isn’t about enforcing rules, but enabling visibility, adaptability, and quality.
• Engineering excellence depends on clean systems. This program enabled teams to spend less time wrestling with tooling and more time delivering valuable software.

Final Takeaway

If you want technical leadership, you need system clarity. And that means consolidating where fragmentation is slowing you down.