F1
15 days
Fractional Design Leadership
F1 - Product Portfolio Consolidation is the survivor list for a fragmented product estate, and the governance that stops the fragmentation from returning. Eighteen months after the deal, your teams are still running parallel systems because the acquisition completed on a fixed date and the estates merged on no date at all, and each team has built a working arrangement on top of the mess. With the Product Portfolio Consolidation module, we decide which products merge, retire, or reposition, and put governance behind that decision.
Over eight to twelve weeks, I chair those decisions and make the call when the room will not. You keep a rationalisation recommendation naming what merges, what retires, and what stays; positioning across the surviving set; a migration and sunset roadmap; and a log of the hard calls as they were made.
Parallel running meant to last a quarter is now how the company works. On a consolidation, the analysis is the easy half, and it is the half everybody buys. Somebody has to decide which products survive, and that is an owners’ decision.
The systems-for-owners’ decision fails on politics, because retiring a product means telling the person who owns it that it is going.
No framework survives an executive who will not have that conversation.
A survivor list handed over at the end of an engagement arrives after it’s needed. So I hold this one.
I chair the decisions, and I make the call when the room will not. I also stay in the seat while the migration sequence starts, which is when the people who agreed in principle discover what they agreed to.
I did this at a global carmaker, where I designed a zoned architecture that separated a brand-locked zone from a more flexible one. That architecture reached 85 per cent component reuse across more than 30 markets.
At a merged UK telco, I unified two legacy brands into one dual-brand library, where designers switch brands without detaching instances.
A global health insurer’s investment arm was scattered across properties; now it sits on one platform under a single governance model.
| Phase | Activities |
|---|---|
| Rationalisation | The portfolio analysed product by product, ending in a recommendation that names what merges, what retires and what stays |
| Positioning | Positioning and differentiation set across the surviving set |
| Sequencing | The migration and sunset roadmap, with the sequencing and the dependencies written against every product going |
| Governance | A governance framework designed to stop the fragmentation returning once your products are consolidated |
| Alignment | Stakeholder alignment documented on the hard calls, with the decisions logged as they were made |
Rationalisation analysis runs two to three weeks, and it comes first because I cannot set positioning until I know which products survive. Positioning takes three to four weeks, the longest stretch, since it settles which product serves which market.
Migration and sunset planning runs two to three weeks and follows the positioning, since the sequence depends on which products carry customers across. Governance design takes another two to three weeks, and stakeholder alignment runs two to three more alongside it.
Eight to twelve weeks end to end, depending on portfolio complexity.
| The problem | What the mandate settles |
|---|---|
| You have come through a merger with overlapping products and no agreed survivor list | A recommendation naming what merges, what retires and what stays, decided inside the engagement |
| Several products serve markets that substantially overlap | Positioning and differentiation across the surviving set, so each product left standing has a market of its own |
| Customers experience your portfolio as several different companies | One consolidated estate, with a migration and sunset roadmap carrying the sequencing and the dependencies |
| A previous consolidation attempt stalled and nobody wants to name why | A chaired decision taken in the room, with the calls logged as they were made |
| Everyone agrees consolidation is needed and nobody will say which product goes | The call made from the seat and held through the argument, with governance that stops the fragmentation returning |
Now the part that thins, and I will leave it unsoftened. I test alignment in week two, before the analysis has committed you, and week two is a breakpoint where the engagement can end.
If the alignment isn’t there, I will say so, and the work stops, because a sequencing exercise is premature without it. I would sooner end in week two than sell you a migration plan that has nowhere to land.
That is the one thing I cannot supply from this seat. I can make an unpopular call, but only where the sponsor is willing to back it. A sponsor is willing; a sponsor who will not have the conversation at all.
This is one of four mandates under Fractional Design Leadership, and it includes the offer and the fee. That page sets which mandate fits which gap.
If your problem is a portfolio nobody has agreed the shape of, then this is the module for you.
If the calls are made and your products have to stay consolidated in code, then Drop is for you.
If the decisions need measurement and an escalation route, Design Governance and Assurance is for you.
If the work is done and the seat has to be passed to a permanent owner, then Leadership Handover and Transition is for you.