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TBM for Agile: Bridging Financial Governance and Agile Delivery

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Navigating the Challenges of Agile with TBM

Agile delivery methodologies have transformed how organizations approach software development, product management, and technology innovation. By empowering teams to work autonomously, iterate quickly, and adapt to changing priorities, Agile has driven remarkable gains in productivity and responsiveness. However, this same flexibility presents significant challenges for financial planners and business leaders tasked with managing costs, allocating resources, and ensuring alignment with strategic priorities.

Traditional financial management models struggle to keep pace with Agile environments, where work is dynamic, cross-functional teams are fluid, and budgets often lack the granularity needed for accurate forecasting. This is where Technology Business Management (TBM) comes in—providing a structured framework to connect Agile work with financial governance, enabling organizations to achieve both agility and accountability.

Managing the Financials of Agile Delivery

TBM offers a set of practices specifically designed to address the complexities of Agile financial management:

  • Cost-Center Structures for Agile Teams: TBM provides best practices for defining flexible cost-center or cost-pool based labor models that reflect the reality of persistent Agile team structures, allowing organizations to track expenses more accurately across dynamic, cross-functional teams.
  • Agile Labor Capitalization Formulas: Traditional methods for capitalizing labor costs often fall short in Agile environments. TBM enables adaptable capitalization approaches that align with Agile work cycles, ensuring compliance while accurately reflecting the value of development efforts.  This also allows Finance teams to forecast across hybrid environments leveraging a mix of traditional waterfall and Agile delivery.
  • Budgeting and Forecasting: By integrating TBM with Agile workflows, organizations can improve budget forecasts, allocate resources more effectively, and respond to financial variances in real time.
To learn more, download our Managing the Financials of Agile Teams eBook.

Connecting Agile Teams, Work, and Financials with TBM Models

Beyond financial controls, TBM models play a critical role in bridging the gap between Agile teams, their work, and the organization’s financial goals:

  • Visibility and Transparency: TBM models provide real-time insights into how Agile investments are performing, helping leaders understand the true cost of delivering products, features, and services.
  • Alignment with Business Priorities: The TBM Taxonomy enables organizations to map Agile teams and their work directly to strategic business capabilities, ensuring that every sprint and release supports broader enterprise goals.
  • Value Measurement: TBM Models allow for the measurement of business value delivered by Agile teams, not just in terms of outputs but in outcomes tied to revenue growth, customer experience, and operational efficiency.

Driving Strategic Alignment in Agile Environments

While Agile methodologies excel at driving speed and adaptability, TBM ensures that these efforts are aligned with financial discipline and strategic objectives. By integrating TBM into Agile practices, organizations can:

  • Foster cross-functional collaboration between finance, technology, and business teams
  • Ensure investment accountability without stifling innovation
  • Optimize resource allocation based on real-time performance data
  • Support data-driven decision-making at all levels of the organization

TBM doesn’t just support Agile—it amplifies its impact by providing the financial and strategic insights needed to turn Agile work into sustainable business value.

Additional Resources

To support your Agile journey, consider exploring the following:

While you’re here, join the TBM Council to connect with peers and stay updated on all things TBM. Explore our communities to see how others are tackling similar challenges, or check out our Knowledge Base for frameworks, case studies, and how-to guidance. Learn more about the TBM Framework and how it supports smarter decision-making across IT and Finance. You can also attend an upcoming event, pursue training or certification, or see how our partners are contributing to this area of TBM practice.

Join the TBM community: where innovators and leaders converge

The TBM Council is your gateway to a treasure trove of knowledge: think cutting-edge research papers, insightful case studies, and vibrant community forums where you can exchange ideas, tackle challenges, and celebrate successes with fellow practitioners.

We’re calling on organizations and forward-thinking individuals to dive into the TBM community. Participate in our events, engage in our discussions, and tap into a vast reservoir of knowledge. This isn’t just about networking; it’s about contributing to and benefiting from the collective wisdom in navigating the dynamic world of cloud computing.

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Red Hat built the world’s largest enterprise open-source software company, growing into a multi-billion-dollar firm before being acquired by IBM Corp. This open-source heritage often placed the value of technology in the product and engineering realm rather than with IT. Thus, not surprisingly, Red Hat’s TBM journey started with a new CFO wanting to know why IT costs were so high. Through the TBM framework and discipline, Red Hat IT successfully delivered cost transparency of all IT spend and then became a model for technology spend planning and forecasting. The IT team added the FinOps discipline to its capabilities and is now managing a broad hybrid cloud portfolio. However, TBM and FinOps have remained in the realm of IT only, until now. Red Hat’s current CIO, Jim Palermo, is driving TBM, FinOps, and Enterprise Agile Management across the company based on IT’s success and through the lens of value stream management. in this session, Jim will walk through Red Hat’s TBM journey and its current transformation to an operational business architecture framework built on value streams aligned to business outcomes.

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For McGraw Hill, having a transparent framework that drives smart investment strategies and a common language across this 135-year-old company is critical. Known as one of the “big three” education publishers, McGraw Hill must stay ahead of their competitors with innovation and value delivery. Join Yuliya Oberman, Finance Director for McGraw Hill Education and Eileen Wade, General Manager of the TBM Council as they discuss how TBM is essential to McGraw Hill’s enterprise resource strategies and digital transformation journey.

Speakers:

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In this fireside chat, Matt Yanchyshyn, GM, AWS Marketplace & Partner Engineer at AWS will join incoming General Manager of the TBM Council, Jack Bischof, for a discussion on best practices for building successful TBM practices focused on cloud financial management. Including a deep dive into the nuances, learnings, and milestones that the world’s 9th largest insurance company is achieving on their Cloud FinOps journey.

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Hear from Ajay Patel, COO at Apptio and Zubin Irani, CEO at Cprime as they discuss how the intersection of TBM and enterprise agile planning is a critical strategy for organizations to adopt if they want to drive business growth more efficiently, in real-time, and keep up with the speed of change that today’s organizations face.

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Presented by:

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Presented by:

  • Manav Doshi, GM, Technology Solutions, Equifax 

Transport for NSW is the winner of the 2022 TBM Council Award for TBM Pacesetter, which recognizes significant progress and value with TBM in a relatively short period of time. In this session, hear how the merger of Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) and Transport for New South Wales resulted in the fastest consolidation of TBM data, models, and reports into a single TBM practice. Hear from Poonam Kataria, Sr. Manager of TBM, as she shares how TBM is driving Transport’s three key strategic outcomes: connecting a customer’s whole life; successful places for communities; and enabling economic activity.

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  • Utilizing the TBM Taxonomy to align M&A practices and drive behavioural change 
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Presented by: 

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Discuss how TBM supports visibility of investments across the enterprise to support setting best practices and standards for managing the impact of environmental, societal, and governance strategies by IT departments and organizations.

The TBM Council Standards Committee has built out TBM integration models with other IT disciplines, including Enterprise Agile and Product Thinking, as well as ServiceNow CSDM. Current findings will be shared to drive group discussion, experience, and feedback. 

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Project to Product Transition

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For organizations looking to transition from projects to products, TBM can help organize resources and outcomes into value streams – the specific sets of activities that align to business outcomes.

Accelerating Cloud Adoption

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For organizations trying to accelerate their cloud journey, TBM provides a way to map a plan and measure the outcomes from cloud migration to cloud cost management to cloud optimization.

Morning Sessions

A look back at 10 years of TBM leadership and community building.

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Speaker:

  • Atticus Tysen, SVP Product Development, Chief Information Security & Fraud Prevention Officer, Intuit

Atticus Tyson and Phil Alfano will guide the group through an executive discussion to capture “What is digital success to you?”. Is it how your organization creates new business capabilities? The elimination of legacy processes and systems? Funding innovation? Or all of the above as long as it drives an improved customer experience? Discuss with your table mates, as an overall group, and capture learnings and takeaways to bring back to your own team.

Speakers:

  • Atticus Tyson, SVP Product Development, Chief Information Security & Fraud Prevention Officer, Intuit
  • Phil Alfano, Field CTO, Apptio

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Afternoon Sessions

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Session abstract coming soon

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TBM empowers hundreds of decision makers with the facts they need to execute a digital strategy faster, without bias, and in alignment across business units. This includes technology consumers, service and application owners, LOB CIOs, enterprise PMOs, compliance leaders, budget coordinators, and many more. What are the fundamentals of developing and executing a successful TBM practice? In this session, experienced practitioners will share the lessons and foundations they’ve learned delivering business value for their organizations with TBM.

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  • Fundamentals of proper support and sponsorship across key stakeholders
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  • Implementing or enhancing the necessary TBM processes

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    • Jeri Koester, CIO, Marshfield Clinic Health System
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