Client Context
A mid-sized UK-based insurance software company serving platforms like ComparetheMarket found themselves at a critical inflection point. Product management teams in the UK and engineering teams in Poland struggled to align. The challenge? Building products for a UK market that Polish engineers had no context for, combined with a broader confusion around roles, strategy, and delivery.
They had five product owners and a senior product manager, but no clarity on how to move away from top-down leadership to an agile, outcome-driven approach. Communication gaps, context loss, and fractured collaboration were stalling progress.
The Ask: Product Owner Training
The initial request was standard: product owner training. But Martin Hinshelwood, Founder of NKD Agility, saw a bigger opportunity. He proposed a Product Management Mentorship Program, an immersive, work-integrated model rooted in deliberate practice.
Diagnosis: A System Problem, Not a People Problem
Martin quickly identified systemic dysfunction:
- A lack of shared understanding about what a Product Owner actually does: Roles had titles, but little clarity on responsibilities, decision-making rights, or how success was measured. This confusion crippled prioritization and value delivery.
- Engineers disconnected from the business domain: Developers in Poland were building features for the UK insurance market without understanding its regulatory nuances or customer expectations. This lack of context led to misaligned solutions.
- Misaligned priorities across geographies: Product management in the UK and development in Poland were operating on different assumptions and uncoordinated timelines, leading to delivery friction and rework.
- Teams stuck between command-and-control habits and agile aspirations: The organization wanted agility but was still making centralized decisions and enforcing control structures that prevented real empowerment.
This wasn’t about introducing a new framework. It was about re-engineering how learning, decision-making, and leadership happened day to day.
Approach: Mentorship as Infrastructure
Over 8 weeks, Martin delivered a customized mentorship experience combining:
- Core product management concepts from Scrum.org: Grounding the team in a shared language and foundation of modern product thinking.
- Real-world examples and mirrors from other organizations: Helping participants see that their challenges weren’t unique, and that other teams had overcome them.
- Weekly assignments to apply new practices inside real work: Instead of theory, the team had to apply what they learned inside their backlog, sprints, and stakeholder conversations.
- Live coaching and feedback loops: Each week provided space for reflection, challenge, and iteration, not just learning, but changing.
Instead of theory in a vacuum, teams got support applying change where it mattered: inside their system of work.
One week, two sub-teams were given the same assignment. One said, “We can’t do this here.” The other succeeded. Same org, same resources. That contrast sparked peer learning, reflection, and creative problem-solving, real agile in action.
Outcomes: Engagement, Capability, and Real Change
Within 8 weeks:
- Product owners became more confident, capable, and collaborative: They moved from passive coordinators to active shapers of value, engaging stakeholders and engineering with greater clarity.
- Engineering engagement increased as context improved: Developers began to understand why features mattered, not just what to build, resulting in better technical decisions.
- Communication between UK and Poland became more fluid and effective: With aligned language, goals, and rituals, the distributed teams began working as one.
- Teams began solving previously intractable problems on their own: Empowered by deliberate practice, teams stopped escalating every challenge upward and started experimenting with local solutions.
The CEO later remarked:
“After a full day of training and a time zone shift, they were still engaged, still asking questions, still figuring out how to make this stick. That tells me we’ve got something special happening here.”
Strategic Impact for CTOs and Tech Leaders
This case demonstrates what every CTO is seeking:
- Technical Leadership: By clearly defining roles, empowering decision-making, and supporting mentorship, the organization unlocked a stronger product-engineering partnership.
- Engineering Excellence: With better context, reduced rework, and stronger feedback loops, the engineering function was able to improve both quality and throughput.
- Organizational Agility: Instead of pushing frameworks, NKD Agility helped create conditions where people could own problems and lead change from where they stood, a hallmark of resilient, adaptive organizations.
Martin Hinshelwood doesn’t deliver courses. He delivers transformation, in context, in flow, and in partnership.
Final Takeaway
Immersive mentorship is not a luxury. It’s the only path to sustainable, scalable change in complex environments.