Ministry of Defense IT department streamlines operations with support from Brainboss
Maritime IT, a department providing mission critical software solutions for the maritime fleet within the Dutch Ministry of Defense, has successfully transformed its operational structure with the support of consultancy firm Brainboss.
Facing a rapidly expanding organization and an increasing demand for new technical functionality, Maritime IT partnered with Brainboss to implement a unified strategic product and portfolio management system. By leveraging Atlassian tools, the organization has moved from a fragmented workflow to a highly predictable and transparent operation.
“Together with Brainboss, we implemented a practical large-scale agile working method based on best practices from SAFe, among others. Our product and portfolio management, and cadence Defense planning are great examples of this,” said Machiel Keetman, head of software development at Maritime IT.
Overcoming the challenge of growth
Prior to this transformation, Maritime IT made use of Jira Data Center alongside various spreadsheets to manage tasks. This detached approach led to severe fragmentation across development teams and organizational sections. Requests and new initiatives entered the department through both formal and informal channels without a central filtering system.
By 2022, this lack of structure resulted in a backlog of more than 300 projects and requests. Stakeholders faced a complete lack of transparency, unpredictable planning timelines, and an uneven distribution of labor across the teams. With growing budgets and an influx of new employees, leadership recognized the urgent need for a unified, scalable way of working to support their core product, Guardion.
“The development of the Guardion product became the ‘single source of truth’ within the organization,” said Robin Klein, transformation consultant at Brainboss.
“The centralization of Jira Data Center and Confluence optimizes workflows, projects, boards, and reports to support the uniform Guardion Product Management working method. The various teams and individuals were trained in the setup and application in daily practice. All documentation, roles, tasks, and process descriptions are in Confluence and are available to everyone within the organization.”
A three-phase approach to uniformity
Working alongside Brainboss, Maritime IT implemented a structured portfolio management framework divided into three distinct phases. The first phase focused on establishing insight and a broad overview. By introducing a strategic layer to the Atlassian framework, the team tied all new initiatives directly to strategic objectives, which effectively eliminated substandard work output.
The second phase established a rigorous governance model. This phase introduced a uniform work intake structure and a clear prioritization process, ensuring that no work reached the development teams until it was thoroughly analyzed.
Roles and responsibilities were explicitly defined within Confluence (a corporate wiki) to serve as a permanent reference for all staff members. Finally, the third phase scaled these proven practices across multiple organizational sections, including capacity management.
Establishing a single source of truth
The centralized deployment of Jira Data Center and Confluence now serves as the single source of truth for the entire organization. Every new initiative must progress through a meticulous workflow consisting of intake, validation, refinement, execution, and delivery. This structure ensures that software delivery is entirely predictable.
To maintain alignment, the department now hosts structured weekly, monthly, and quarterly meetings. These events allow teams to demonstrate progress and collaborate directly with management. Confluence operates as the central repository for all documentation, task descriptions, and roles, making vital information accessible to everyone in the department.
“Through the combination of our expertise and that of Brainboss, we managed to establish optimized Product Management for Guardion, both for the process as well as the setup of Jira as a supporting tool that is widely used in the organization,” said Egbert van der Veen, product manager at Maritime IT.
Predictable results and future integration
The implementation has delivered clear visibility and eliminated informal, ad hoc request channels. Management now makes use of real-time dashboards to monitor work distribution and plan future roadmaps with a higher level of accuracy than before.
Looking ahead, Maritime IT plans to further integrate its technical tools by adopting Jira Service Management to incorporate incidents and compliance controls into daily team planning. The ongoing partnership with Brainboss ensures continuous training for new personnel, allowing Maritime IT to remain focused on its core operations while maintaining a reliable, data-driven foundation.
Speaking to the process of advising organizations and departments on product and portfolio management, Klein notes that organizations should optimize their tools and portfolio management (like Atlassian) to better suit their context. “Start today, invest time and enthusiasm in planning and making work transparent, and bring this together into a unified way of working and tools to create a solid foundation for efficient and predictable organizing,” he said.
