Sarah Roche
Case Studies
Organizational Architect · Systems Builder · Talent Multiplier
“I design organizations, systems, and leaders that continue to thrive because of what was built.”
Short, metric-forward stories of organizational architecture, transformation, and leadership that lasts.
This body of work is best understood as a connected transformation chain, not a set of disconnected project wins. Cohorts, dashboards, milestones, review frameworks, and Project Making it Easier (MiE) didn't each just improve a process — each one raised the organization's operating altitude. Every solution changed what the agency could see, decide, and sustain, and every new level of maturity revealed the next problem worth solving.
PfMP® (Portfolio Management Professional) and CPMAI certified, with SAFe certification underway. Eight years leading project management and creative operations at enterprise scale, most recently as a director. Vice President of the Penfold Theatre board and of the Good Water chapter of the Texas Master Naturalists.
Case Study Menu
Click or tap any card to expand the full story — challenge, build, measurable wins, and what success revealed next.
01
Agency Transformation: Cohort Model Rollout
I helped turn a slow, centralized staffing model into an operating model where context, ownership, and decision-making moved closer to the work.
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5 days → 1 day resourcing
~30 min saved per kickoff
Fewer internal review rounds
Escalations to managers down 60%
Tier-one work +50% YoY, 3 years running
The challenge
- Project resourcing often took about five days.
- Creative teams had limited accumulated knowledge of specific lines of business.
- Account leads had to re-orient teams to audience and business needs in each kickoff.
- Stylistic editorial reviews added internal cycles that did not always improve the work.
What I built
- Rolled out the cohort model as the core agency transformation.
- Aligned cross-functional teams around lines of business.
- Created deeper domain ownership and repeatability.
- Moved work context and decision-making closer to the teams doing the work.
Measurable wins
- Reduced project resourcing time from five days to one day.
- Drastically increased creative team knowledge of their assigned lines of business.
- Eradicated the need for account leads to re-align teams on audience needs during every kickoff.
- Saved approximately 30 minutes per project kickoff.
- Reduced stylistic editorial reviews and removed an internal review round from many projects.
- Manager involvement in day-to-day escalations dropped by 60%, freeing leaders to focus on systemic issues instead of arbitrating individual project fires.
- Priority ("tier one") work grew by 50% year over year across three years, once teams had a mechanism to protect what mattered most.
What success revealed
The model worked because it distributed authority. That success created a new blind spot: directors had less visibility into decisions happening across cohorts. The next challenge became visibility without pulling decision-making back to the center.
Executive capabilityOperating model design, distributed leadership, organizational scale
“Before, there was a mechanism for taking work. After, there was a mechanism for prioritizing it.”
02
Dashboards and Reporting: Visibility Without Centralized Control
I built visibility structures that helped leaders see operational health without becoming a bottleneck.
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Visibility without recentralizing
Less anecdotal reporting
Better leadership awareness
The challenge
- Cohorts empowered teams but reduced director visibility.
- Leaders needed to see patterns, risks, and decisions across groups.
- Re-centralizing decisions would have weakened the gains created by cohorts.
What I built
- Created dashboards and reporting mechanisms to surface operating health.
- Designed visibility that did not require directors to own every decision.
- Made risk and activity easier to discuss at the leadership level.
- Protected team autonomy while improving leader awareness.
Outcomes
- Increased leadership visibility into cohort activity.
- Reduced reliance on anecdotal status updates.
- Preserved distributed decision-making while improving awareness.
- Created a clearer view of operational health across teams.
What success revealed
Once leaders could see decisions and activity more clearly, the next issue emerged: they still could not easily tell where projects were in the lifecycle or how resources were being used week by week.
Executive capabilityGovernance design, operational visibility, leadership enablement
03
Milestones: Making the Work Lifecycle Visible
I created a shared language for where work is, where resources are going, and where leaders need to pay attention.
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Lifecycle visibility
Better prioritization
Better intake & balancing
22 people leaders and their teams onboarded
The challenge
- Leaders could not easily see where projects sat in the lifecycle.
- Resource use by week was difficult to understand during priority discussions.
- Urgent work and large projects needed better impact context.
- The agency lacked a shared language for portfolio-level work movement.
What I built
- Designed and rolled out the milestone framework.
- Created shared lifecycle language across the agency.
- Connected project status, resource usage, and operational awareness.
- Enabled more grounded intake, prioritization, and resource balancing conversations.
Measurable wins
- Improved visibility into where projects sat in the lifecycle.
- Opened awareness of where resources were spending their time.
- Made prioritization conversations more grounded and actionable.
- Improved project intake and resource balancing discussions.
- Created visibility into patterns of delivery friction.
- Personally walked 22 people leaders and their teams through what the framework meant for their day-to-day work, then briefed the broader leadership group on its impact.
What success revealed
Milestones solved one visibility problem and exposed the next constraint: most churn was happening in the creative milestone. That shifted attention from status tracking to review behavior and scope of review.
Executive capabilityPortfolio visibility, organizational intelligence, prioritization systems
“The work rarely falls apart where the problem starts. It falls apart where the consequences of earlier decisions become visible.”
04
Creative Review Transformation: Scope, Churn, and Decision Quality
I used milestone visibility to find the friction point, then built tools to make creative review clearer and more valuable.
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Churn source identified
Review friction reduced
Reusable assets created
The challenge
- Milestone data showed churn concentrated in creative review.
- Review scope was unclear, creating unnecessary rounds and delivery friction.
- Internal reviews could drift into stylistic preference instead of decision value.
- Teams needed clearer expectations for who reviewed what, when, and why.
What I built
- Created assets and frameworks around scope of review and review churn.
- Clarified review expectations, decision ownership, and feedback purpose.
- Connected review improvements back to milestone visibility.
- Built tools that could be reused beyond a single team or project.
Outcomes
- Reduced unnecessary review friction.
- Clarified feedback expectations and decision ownership.
- Helped reduce avoidable internal review rounds.
- Improved delivery predictability.
- Created reusable assets that became broader operating model foundations.
What success revealed
The review work showed we had built more than local process improvements — we had created frameworks with broader value. That became part of the foundation for scaling into Project MiE and the Marchitects work.
Executive capabilityProcess transformation, decision clarity, stakeholder alignment
05
Project Making it Easier (MiE) and Marchitects: Scaling the Frameworks to Marketing
I helped translate agency-tested operating model components into broader Marketing transformation work.
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Agency frameworks scaled
Marketing-wide foundation
Cross-functional alignment
~150 → ~600-person organization
9 business units
15 partner teams coordinated
21 processes unified
The challenge
- Marketing faced broader versions of the agency problems: prioritization, intake, governance, initiative visibility, and resource alignment.
- Large initiatives required shared language and decision mechanisms across functions.
- The next challenge was scale, not invention.
What I built
- Used agency-developed foundations: milestones, scope of review, review churn, and operating model visibility.
- Partnered through Project MiE and Marchitects to scale frameworks across Marketing.
- Translated tested agency practices into broader organizational infrastructure.
- Connected planning, strategy, creative, production, and execution.
Measurable wins
- Created a foundation for Marketing-wide initiative visibility.
- Supported stronger prioritization and resource conversations.
- Extended agency-tested frameworks beyond their original environment.
- Improved alignment across planning, strategy, creative, production, and delivery.
- Created reusable operating model components for larger-scale transformation.
- Scaled the framework from a roughly 150-person organization into a marketing ecosystem of around 600 people.
- The effort now touches nine business units and coordinates with fifteen partner teams to keep them aligned.
- Identified 21 distinct marketing processes that needed to sit under a shared framework rather than run independently.
What success revealed
MiE is the culmination of the agency transformation chain. The next problem became how to scale governance, visibility, and prioritization across a larger and more complex Marketing ecosystem.
Executive capabilityEnterprise transformation, scalable governance, cross-functional operating model design
“This isn't the origin of the architecture. It's the opportunity to scale it.”
Beyond the Core Chain
Where the Same Instinct Shows Up Elsewhere
The five stories above form one connected transformation chain inside the agency. The six below show the same pattern — find the system, build the structure, multiply the capability — playing out in community leadership, adoption, talent, and earlier entrepreneurial work.
06
Austin Public Affairs Committee: Reviving a Dormant Organization
I took a group that had effectively stalled during the pandemic and rebuilt it around mission, ownership, and measurable civic impact.
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6 members placed
Membership increased
Chamber philanthropic award
The challenge
- The group had been designed for in-person engagement and lost momentum during the pandemic.
- Membership, participation, mission, and impact had faded.
- The committee needed more than meetings — it needed a reason to matter.
What I built
- Gave the group a renewed mission.
- Created subcommittees and delegated authority to members.
- Built opportunities for members to lead outside the committee.
- Reported on the impact of the group so progress was visible.
Measurable wins
- Increased committee membership and engagement.
- Placed six members on Chamber, Austin Young Chamber, committee, and judging panel opportunities.
- Created member-led subcommittees.
- Reported measurable impact back to stakeholders.
- Helped the organization win the Chamber award for Philanthropic Companies.
What success revealed
The committee did not just need participation — it needed distributed ownership. Once members had mission, authority, and visible impact, the committee became a leadership platform.
Executive capabilityVolunteer leadership, mission design, influence without authority, community impact
07
Change Engine: Making Adoption Repeatable
I built a way to think about change not as a launch moment, but as a behavior that has to be made durable.
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Adoption checkpoints
Repeatable change approach
94 Stop/Start/Continue sessions in one year
13 pilots tested
5 process rollouts completed
20 recurring knowledge-sharing sessions
The challenge
- Organizations often implement solutions without building the mechanisms people need to absorb them.
- Change fatigue, unclear ownership, and inconsistent adoption can make good solutions fail.
- The real challenge is not announcing change — it is getting behavior to stick.
What I built
- Developed a repeatable approach to adoption and behavioral change.
- Focused on communication, ownership, rhythm, reinforcement, and feedback loops.
- Created a practical framework for helping teams move from awareness to use.
Measurable wins
- Created a stronger structure for adoption planning.
- Improved clarity around change ownership and reinforcement.
- Made implementation less dependent on one-time communication.
- Created a reusable lens for future transformation efforts.
- In one year, the engine ran 94 Stop/Start/Continue sessions, tested 13 pilots, and completed 5 full process rollouts, alongside 20 recurring knowledge-sharing sessions for the wider team.
What success revealed
A solution is not done when it launches. The next problem is durability: can the new behavior survive pressure, competing priorities, and turnover?
Executive capabilityChange leadership, adoption strategy, sustainable transformation
“A sign of success is not that there are no problems. A sign of success is that you are finally solving new and better problems.”
08
Talent Multiplier: Building Capability That Lasts
The work I am proudest of is not what depends on me. It is what keeps working because others are stronger, clearer, and more capable.
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Leaders developed
Systems others can run
8 promoted to senior roles
4 promoted into people leadership
The challenge
- Organizations become fragile when too much knowledge, decision-making, or execution capability sits with too few people.
- Teams cannot scale if every answer has to come from the same leader.
- Capability has to be built intentionally, not accidentally.
What I built
- Created systems, frameworks, and learning opportunities that helped others lead.
- Mentored, coached, taught, and created structures others could use independently.
- Focused on making capability visible, repeatable, and transferable.
Measurable wins
- Built stronger teams and more confident leaders.
- Created frameworks others could run without direct oversight.
- Supported professional development through speaking, mentoring, and community leadership.
- Reduced dependency on single points of knowledge or control.
- Eight team members were promoted into senior roles and four into people leadership; alumni moved into strategy, data-driven communications, a chief-of-staff role, cohort leadership, coaching, and a product owner role.
- The team shifted from task delivery to broader organizational influence, leveraging each other to improve workflows rather than routing everything through one leader.
What success revealed
The real measure of leadership is not what I personally control. It is what continues to thrive because I helped build it.
Executive capabilityTalent development, leadership multiplication, institutional capability building
“I would rather have happy people all over the world than unhappy people sitting next to me.”
09
KickassPM and Professional Community Leadership
I helped create spaces where project managers could learn, connect, and see themselves as strategic leaders.
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Community engagement
Professional education
The challenge
- Project managers need more than templates and methods.
- They need practical tools, confidence, language, and community.
- Many PMs are doing strategic work before they have the title or narrative for it.
What I built
- Supported professional community programming and education.
- Helped create spaces for PMs to learn, share, mentor, and grow.
- Focused on practical, human, confidence-building development.
Outcomes
- Expanded access to practical PM learning and peer support.
- Supported community engagement and professional growth.
- Helped PMs connect their delivery work to broader leadership capability.
- Created value beyond formal organizational structures.
What success revealed
Professional development works best when people are not just taught, but activated. The next opportunity is helping PMs see and describe the strategic leadership they are already practicing.
Executive capabilityCommunity building, professional education, capability development
“The work is different, but the instinct is the same: leave the system stronger than you found it.”
10
Restaurant Ownership: Entrepreneurial Operations
Before I was designing systems inside large organizations, I was learning how to build them from scratch.
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Business built from zero
Customer operations
The challenge
- Starting a business meant there was no inherited infrastructure.
- Product, operations, customer experience, quality, finances, and reputation all had to be built at the same time.
- Growth required repeatability, not just effort.
What I built
- Built and operated a small business.
- Created repeatable processes for product, orders, customer experience, and operations.
- Learned how to balance quality, service, cost, and capacity in real time.
Outcomes
- Built an entrepreneurial venture from the ground up.
- Developed operational discipline, customer focus, and financial ownership.
- Learned how systems support growth and consistency.
- Carried those lessons into later organizational design work.
What success revealed
Entrepreneurship taught me that execution is not just hustle. It is system design. The next problem was learning how to make quality and growth repeatable without depending entirely on personal effort.
Executive capabilityEntrepreneurial ownership, operations, customer experience, resourcefulness
11
Platypus TV: Innovation and Behavior Change
This was an early lesson in a truth I still use: technology only matters when people are ready to change how they behave.
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Venture co-founded
Behavioral insight
The challenge
- The concept explored emerging ways people might consume and interact with content.
- The biggest question was not whether the idea was interesting — it was whether user behavior was ready.
What I built
- Co-founded a venture during graduate school.
- Explored how emerging technology could reshape content consumption.
- Worked through concept, team formation, creative development, and early execution.
Outcomes
- Developed early innovation and product thinking experience.
- Learned how market readiness and human behavior shape adoption.
- Built a durable lens for later transformation work: tools do not create change by themselves.
- Gained a practical understanding of emerging technology and behavior.
What success revealed
The product did not change the world, and that honesty matters. The product itself was not the enduring outcome. The enduring lesson was that adoption is behavioral. That insight now shows up in how I approach change, technology, operating models, and organizational readiness.
Executive capabilityInnovation, emerging technology awareness, strategic learning, behavioral insight
Executive Positioning
Solving one problem is proof you're ready for the next one.
I build systems that help organizations see themselves more clearly. Once they can see more clearly, they uncover the next constraint. That next constraint is not evidence that the previous solution failed — it is proof that the organization has matured enough to solve a more complex problem.
