Edward Jones: Delivering a New Digital Experience in Just 12 Months—and Sparking Enterprise Transformation
While working as a consultant at a prior firm, our founder, Joshua King, was brought in to help Edward Jones tackle a mission-critical challenge.
Edward Jones was losing market share due to the perception that their web and mobile tools were outdated and unable to meet modern client expectations. Leadership made a bold decision: launch an entirely new digital experience in 12 months—or risk paying for another year of costly legacy platform fees.
This wasn’t a cosmetic facelift. It required rebuilding everything from backend integrations to the client-facing presentation layer.
Challenge
Edward Jones formed four internal development teams and engaged external partners for UX design and mobile development. Despite strong talent, the scope and timeline demanded more than technical skill—it needed precision planning, unified execution, and cultural alignment under extreme pressure.
Insight
Joshua realized the biggest risk wasn’t just technical—it was misalignment. Without shared understanding and coordinated work, even skilled teams would fall short of the 12-month target.
Approach
Joshua worked alongside Edward Jones’ teams and product owners to:
Develop comprehensive backlogs and estimation models
Establish consistent build cadences
Stand up and train teams in agile ways of working (tailored for each team’s context)
Run biweekly executive and team reviews for alignment and transparency
He facilitated a full-site story mapping session that:
Defined the scope for the entire site
Created a prioritized release map
Clarified which features would launch in each phase
Key Actions
Tailored Agile Coaching
Introduced Kanban for some teams, Scrum for others—based on team maturity and workflow realities
Fostered collaboration between product owners and delivery teams
Innovative Pairing & Knowledge Transfer
Implemented paired and mob programming on teams lacking experience
Rapidly surfaced gaps in platform knowledge and built shared understanding
Automated Testing Pilot
Identified bottlenecks where manual QA couldn’t keep up
Piloted a new process: every feature was manually tested once, then immediately automated for all future builds
Affinity-Based Estimation
Pioneered a cross-team estimation model using affinity estimation
Avoided rigid frameworks like SAFe’s “ideal developer days,” keeping planning flexible and practical
Results
Despite significant challenges and the discovery of unknown complexities along the way:
Delivered the new internal digital experience in just 6 months
Launched a fully functional “same or better” external experience within the 12-month deadline
Avoided additional costs for another year on the legacy platform
Beyond the technical win, the project generated:
Greater team collaboration and transparency
Sharper understanding of processes and interdependencies
Faster decision-making through clear, shared goals
Client Impact
Edward Jones’ leadership recognized the project’s success as more than just a new digital platform—it became a catalyst for a broader agile transformation across the technology organization.
The principles and practices piloted during this project now influence how Edward Jones approaches delivery, planning, and team collaboration enterprise-wide.
Key Takeaway:
“When high-stakes projects demand speed, clarity, and precision, enterprise-grade transformation is possible—even under intense deadlines.”
The experience and methods Joshua honed during this engagement directly shape the way Think Systems helps medium-sized businesses achieve big-company results without big-company overhead today.