How do you move a massive enterprise from big, slow projects to lean, customer-driven innovation? In this candid fireside chat from Prodacity 2025, Paul Gaffney and Angie Brown, two former Home Depot technology leaders, reflect on 10 years of digital transformation—what worked, what didn’t, and the lessons every enterprise can learn.

From shifting IT investment to customer-driven priorities to navigating tensions between speed and control, this conversation provides real-world insights on making large-scale change sustainable.

🔹 Key Topics Covered:

• From projects to products: How Home Depot transformed its IT approach
• Why legacy enterprise tech resists change—and how to push through
• Aligning business & technology priorities for real customer impact
• Lessons from "Grow with the Pro": Serving high-value customers with digital solutions
• Why top-down mandates fail—and what actually works
• How finance, leadership, and engineering must evolve for true agility

🕒 Key Highlights & Timestamps:
[00:03] - Introduction: Paul & Angie’s journey from Home Depot’s early transformation
[02:28] - The shift from what leaders want vs. what customers need
[04:14] - Why most enterprise IT projects start with the wrong incentives
[06:24] - The reality of balancing customer needs vs. internal business processes
[08:57] - Breaking free from complex, tangled IT systems
[10:06] - Case study: How Home Depot rapidly deployed curbside pickup
[12:43] - Why transformation is never "done"—it’s a continuous process
[15:51] - How to balance strategic priorities across departments
[19:45] - Why cross-functional collaboration beats rigid project plans
[21:07] - The evolution of finance from cost control to business enabler
[24:42] - Lessons learned: Lean transformation is a journey, not a destination
[28:31] - Final thoughts: Tenacity, adaptation, and the power of customer focus

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Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rise8/

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Paul Gaffney (00:03):

I am Paul. This is Angie, and what Bryon didn't cover with you all is Angie and I actually worked together at the Home Depot. We met just over 10 years ago in the summer of 2014. And the theme of this conference is lean. And I think it's fair to say that when we're talking about lean, we're talking about can you succeed at getting an organization to direct close to a hundred percent of its energy to things that actually matter and not lean is energy that gets spent on things that maybe somebody thought it was going to matter, but it ended up not mattering. And I don't think we have a good word for not lean, but when Angie and I first met, I think we had a couple of things on the plate that were definitely not lean. That's fair, very fair. So Home Depot in the summer of 2014, HomeDepot first as a company was about an $80 billion retailer then, and it's now $160 billion some $150ish.

(01:24):

So it's doubled in size, close to doubled in size in 10 years. Retailers tend to trade in the stock market at about one time sales if they're decent, less than onetime sales if they're not so decent. And very, very few trade it more than onetime sales and Home Depot's up around two and a half times sales in the current market, generally regarded as a fabulous organization. But in the summer of 2014, I arrived at Home Depot and Angie started telling me about these two giant projects that we had going on. And they each were, they were like their classic, classic old school enterprise technology. They were defined upfront, they had hundreds of features and we were wondering whether we actually needed any of those things. And we began a journey to, we didn't call it lean, we just wanted to be more effective about what we were working on. How has this all unfolded over the last 10 years?

Angie Brown (02:28):

So a couple of other historical comments. Paul was really one of the, he was the voice of bringing agile and lean into the Home Depot, both for the technology organization and from a business mindset. And so if I was to kind of chunk it up into 10 years and how it went, the first couple since he joined were all about all of us learning and getting more familiar with the concepts of how we should be running our shop versus how we were. And we've got a large shop that did not happen overnight by any means. Then we hit a stride for sure, where I think we were continuing to be continuing to mature, but most everybody, we had rowing in the same direction and going well, and I feel like now the stage that we're in right now, it's unfair to say that there are cracks showing by any means, but I think it's a learning opportunity to some of the things that Siobhán and Josh were saying that you never stop.

(03:35):

You never stop continuing to focus on those best practices. You never stop continuing to make sure that you're not reverting back to bad behaviors, et cetera. And so we continue to have more and more and more wins that are operating in that way. I won't say that we're a hundred percent, I don't know if an organization of our size will ever get to a hundred percent, but we're at a really high percent commit rate on that stage and try very hard to make sure that the work we're doing starts with the value we're going to deliver for the organization.

Paul Gaffney (04:14):

That was probably the biggest pivot and maybe is the same big pivot that you all are trying to bring about the inertia in our work, the inertia in enterprise technology kind of pulls the universe toward doing what a sponsor wants. And we're all trying to, and I think Angie's been very successful at the Home Depot at pivoting that not toward what does the sponsor want, but to what does the company need. And in many cases the best proxy for that is what does the customer need. If you were to spend time wandering around the halls of the Home Depot headquarters, you would not get 20 yards without encountering inverted pyramid on the wall with the customer at the top of the pyramid and the CEO at the bottom. How helpful has it been to have that customer centric company culture in this battle of the tension between, Hey, I am a powerful budget owning sponsor and I want my thing. Is it helpful to be able to say, well, that's not what we do here. How does that tension play out?

Angie Brown (05:28):

If you do any history on Home Depot, there's a book that was written by our founders and they tell this story of being in a parking lot and asking the question when the customer comes out and their very first store empty handed and saying, why didn't you buy from us? And they said, well, you didn't have so-and-so and so then one of the two founders runs finds so-and-so brings it back, sells it to the customer the next time. This constant feedback loop was something that was ingrained in our very first store of what brings you into our store? Did you have a good experience? Did you find what you need? So to your question, that ethos absolutely grounds us in how we deliver. Now there are also things that like you go, well, some of our customers are also our internal associates and some of our customers are our supply chain associates and things like that.

(06:24):

So there is this real tension of customer back exists and we're grounded in it. But then we also sometimes are faced with things that may actually cause a tiny bit of customer friction, but are very advantageous for our associates, which we also care and feed for and put them first. So it's not always as cut and dry as just being customer back can sound because you can have those different organizations that you're trying to account for and you would argue each one of them is a version of your customer and solutions don't always please all three and you have to find a way through that.

Paul Gaffney (07:04):

The reality of it's never just one straightforward thing. You're balancing a bunch of things. And I think the role of our little talk here is to try and show how these tensions that you all experience actually show up in a real environment. So this first tension is often around what forces really driving what we decide to work on. Is it outcomes, is it value for the company or is it something that came to a high powered executive in a dream? So that's a constant tension, but I think at least in Home Depot's case generally has been resolved toward the why are we doing this and are we doing this in reasons that work for the company? A second big theme, and Siobhán and Josh talked about this and I'm sure you all encounter this, is the tangled mess, right? So you decide that you're going to start focusing on outcomes.

(08:04):

You decide that you want to direct more of the energy of the enterprise to making good things happen. And that inevitably leads to, okay, I'm going to stop doing projects and I'm going to start paying attention to products, things that I can say, Hey, we do this thing as a business, we do pricing, we do inventory lookup. We're going to do that thing one way and do it really well, but nobody starts there and we certainly didn't start there and the world is dynamic. How has that evolved? How has the, I'll admit, I was a super optimist when I had the first conversation at Home Depot in 2015 about, hey, we're going to clean up this highly fragmented untangle this wall. I thought we could actually do it in three years. I think it took a little bit longer, just

Angie Brown (08:57):

A little bit.

Paul Gaffney (08:59):

How has that played out though, and how has that helped or hurt this quest for outcomes?

Angie Brown (09:05):

So it's interesting if you think about how we approach our development organization, and like I said, it's it's really large. There's a fundamental architecture play for us that you and I and a few others I think drew out on whiteboard one time in an offsite where we've instilled what we call our comments architecture platform. If you think real quick, and I won't go too far in the weeds on this, but if you think real quick about shopping with Home Depot, you can shop with us digitally, you can pick up your product in the store, et cetera. We want the customer experience to be consistent no matter which of those ways you choose to shop with us. That consistency is underlined with core functions around tax, around price, around catalog, et cetera. And so we do have what's called a commons architecture. So now if your outcome is something like I want to be able to do, I don't know, we did this in Covid curbside pickup.

(10:06):

The reality of bringing together an experience around curbside pickup, which I know I just listed a feature, not necessarily the outcome, but ease of pickup in a time where you don't have to go into the store and things of that nature, then take a step back and decompose that into the teams that you need to make that a reality. And so the difficult of that is you're now into an online team, you're into a sourcing inventory management team, you're into a delivery team, potentially you're into a store picking team, et cetera. And so all of those have product managers that are running a backlog and trying to go after value and there is a level of needing to align that organization on value in order to get that work most effectively across the finish line. And so I think to the extent that coming back to the broader question, I think it's absolutely been beneficial, but we have had to add this layer for the cross-cutting nature of our work in order to reduce the time that it takes to get people a common understanding of priority and all swimming in the right direction.

(11:13):

You and I talked some in the prep before that sometimes for the product managers that were involved in that, it seemed a little like we were being authoritative and telling them how they should prioritize. But if you come all the way back up to the company priorities, we have strategic objectives as an organization, we know the TAM we need to go after next. We know the customers that are going to help us drive the benefit of the business. We do need to be able to align as a technology organization that work that supports those outcomes should have common shared priority across all the that are required. So that's been an evolution for us to build out that muscle as well versus every product being a little bit more independent in how they thought about priority.

Paul Gaffney (12:05):

That's I think a great recap of sort of this, we're talking about the tensions between ideal lean and real lean. And so if the first tension is this tension between what does the customer or the company need and then what does some executive want this second tension is hey, we actually, I think we did a decent job of laying out what is the core, what's the software expression of the Home Depot? And then you and your teams built it. And I'm sorry, I thought it could get done in three years and I think it probably ended up taking eight. And it turns out I think it takes,

Angie Brown (12:43):

That didn't take eight,

Paul Gaffney (12:43):

But

Angie Brown (12:44):

I don't know if it took three eight,

Paul Gaffney (12:46):

It took eight for the current CEO to tell me, I think I finally understand this.

Angie Brown (12:50):

Okay.

Paul Gaffney (12:52):

So that tension though is you then create ways that people conduct themselves, which actually adds a lot of value to the company because instead of a small handful of people deciding, you've now equipped dozens if not hundreds. And Angie keeps referencing the size of the organization. I think probably about 7,000 people in the Home Depot technology organization. You now have a lot more people though who can direct portions of that org and they're focused on the right outcomes and they understand the company strategy. And so that's actually the path to a more effective organization is more decision makers rather than fewer. But then you get this tension of, oh wait a minute, we want to solve a new problem that cuts across seven things. And this is very tangible for the Home Depot. I'd love you to tell the group a little bit more about this bigger thing.

(13:46):

You all know Home Depot as a company that you go to their stores as a consumer and you shop as a consumer. And Home Depot is the league leader in consumer sales of home improvement merchandise. But the secret to the Home Depot's economic success over the last decade has been an intense focus on the professional customer. If you go to Home Depot once a week or a couple times a month, the pro's in there every day and the pro has very different needs and there's not one pro, they're a roofing pro is different than a painting pro. And the company strategy has been grow with the pro and take outside share in the pro that must have introduced lots of tensions across the common architecture because the pro needs something that might affect inventory management and pricing and point of sale. How do you manage that without coming across as too top down? What's the right amount of top down?

Angie Brown (14:50):

So we've moved a little bit in our approach actually to this. When we first started at what I would call an outsized focus on pro-growth, we structured it with a number of stakeholders and business constituents, but we didn't necessarily structure it with a corresponding product and engineering leader. And those business constituents were responsible for trying to navigate the complexity of the technology organization and end up at the door of the team they needed to do the work or the product person that they wanted to talk to that had a number of different fallacies to it, including not necessarily looking at an end to end experience for the pro. And so we did evolve about a year and a half into it into having actually what we would call VP of product for pro. And you go, well, hold on, what's the product there for pro?

(15:51):

Is that really a product? Because the reality when you look at the investment that we're making there, there's actually very little investment that ends up being deemed just for pro. A lot of the investment is occurring in changing these other experiences like our selling experience in the store, like our online experience, like our supply chain, et cetera. However, we needed the vision of the end-to-end experience that we were trying to bring to life for the pro customer. And if no one owned that and it was owned by everybody, we saw some tension and friction happening there. So we kind of hit a middle road where we put in a thin layer of leadership that has, we've got product leaders on the pro team as well who are defining the things that are most impactful for the pro customers and they kind of get it into a strategy type state.

(16:49):

And then they pull in the product managers from the other areas like the online sales or the store sales who bring the expertise of those domains to Bayer to take it from that high level strategy into more of what are the best ways that we can go after it. Do we always do those handoffs perfect? No. Does sometimes the pro team go a little bit too far to where the receiving teams feels like they're getting orders instead of bringing their expertise to Bayer? Yes, sometimes that happens as well, but it's been a learning opportunity for us to get that where I feel like we know now what great looks like for us on that. And we're constantly again in the stage of trying to make sure that that operating model is going well. The upside of this has been that we can truly stand back and look at have that higher level objective for the pro customer. When you talk about what they need from a delivery perspective. I mean there's some real end to end work that has to be done to improve the delivery experience and you've got to look at it from one end to the other in order to make measurable change for the pros experience. And this structure has provided us that oversight that we didn't have previously.

Paul Gaffney (18:12):

And this is really quite a remarkable transformation and I think it leads into sort of the next tension which has been are we planning everything out in advance and are we then focusing people's energy on make that plan happen? Or are we setting strategic objectives that may have some tension among them? It may be impossible to satisfy all of the strategic objectives at the same time, but equipping people to adapt what they're working on as the strategy evolves. This is actually a massive transformation and it is probably, I didn't appreciate it at the time, how important that was when we started Home Depot, like many organizations was very much do the plan, you got the things in it and it was so strict that the finance organization would actually make sure that the people weren't working on anything that wasn't in the plan. That's the story for another time. I'll tell a little bit about that tomorrow. And that's what led to when you have that mindset, when you have that project plan it all in advance because we know what we're doing, what that leads to is that leads to the next team that comes along and needs a different approach to pricing. Well, they built a new pricing system.

(19:35):

They don't try to make the existing pricing system work. And I think perhaps one of the most important things you all have accomplished is you don't do that anymore.

(19:45):

That doesn't mean there's not tension. That doesn't mean there aren't three competing forces for what the next thing in pricing should be, but it's getting done in the pricing product, not in the 29th version of the pricing system. And I'm assuming that that has led you guys to actually being more adaptable in a complex environment.

Angie Brown (20:09):

Yeah, you're spot on forcing that, if you will, with that word choice does a couple of things. One, just like you said, if a individual portion of the organization has a pricing requirement, it also forces us to ask the question, does that requirement really only apply to that one organization? And if you don't have that comments kind of approach where you're only looking at pricing or for your organized around pricing for the company, sometimes those questions don't happen if you allow it to happen on this side. The other side of that equation though, just like you're saying is even if the answer is right now, no, we just want to do it with X, Y, Z use case customer, whatever the case may be, we build it in a way that's easily portable then to the rest of the organization and we can light it up as time goes by with a lot less effort. So definitely gives us bigger speed to market or faster speed to market as we expand these use cases.

Paul Gaffney (21:07):

I talked a little bit about the role of the finance organization in the not lean enterprise. The finance organization tends to be a police function, and I'm going to talk a lot about this tomorrow, but we certainly had some of that and I think there's a normal tension in most large enterprises where, I don't know that there's a polite way to say this. Finance organizations don't trust technology organizations and technologies that have big budgets. A lot of the stuff that the money gets spent on is a little bit obscure and natural control reaction to that is, I got to be all over that. I got to be providing scrutiny and control. And this turns into a kind of cost management exercise rather than an outcome thing. And this can be your enemy if you are trying to move from outputs to outcomes. But you've got a finance organization that's focused on counting like how many hours are we spending on this thing that we budgeted for? And my sense is that the Home Depot finance organization has actually become more of a driver of outcomes than a policemen of what are people working on? How did that happen

Angie Brown (22:23):

With some blood, sweat and tears. But I mean we did get there. I think we moved into product-based funding and then one of the things that we started doing though is there was a period of time where we were not being maybe as communicative around what we were going to do within those products. And so we did need to be a little bit more vocal. And so finance was actually a great partner to help us interpret the questions that were being asked and help us find a way to deliver a narrative that was true to product-based funding. Didn't go back to project-based line item, but also helped instill confidence with the CFO, et cetera on where the money was going. And at the end of the day, that's critically important. I want our CFO cheering us on. I am willing to open up and talk to whatever level of detail that they want to go into about where our money is going and what we're working on.

(23:25):

I could probably put 'em to sleep by going into a lot of the details, but it's not meant to be obscure and if there's a perception that there's curiosity or lack of understanding on where the investment's going, that was something I felt like we had to come to the table to help answer. And we've gotten great support on that front. There's been a willingness to learn on both sides of the table. Most of our funding does run as product-based funding and we try to keep durable teams. The other thing that you and I talked about is when you look at the pro investment, we've led a couple of examples. We've allowed a couple of things that to be funded more like a project only through the lens of Back to Pro may have eight objectives. I don't yet know which products are going to need to shift to meet those objectives. So in those rare critical cross-cutting large scale investments, we move a lot of money around as we get more clarity on where the priorities are going to be.

Paul Gaffney (24:31):

And if you haven't all picked up on the theme, I think one of Angie's through lines in all of the tensions that we've been talking about is there isn't one right way.

(24:42):

There is a good general direction move away from project funding, move to durable product teams, but don't be dogmatic about that. Things will come up and you need to adjust and communicating around that is helpful. I don't know that I've ever told you this. When we first met, I was really nervous after two or three months and kind of getting my head around what I thought we needed to do and what I thought we needed to do involved a lot of folks like you who had gotten really good. I mean, there are people who get really good at running the project organization and committing to dates and focusing on project updates that aren't about outcomes, but they're about the schedule. Tell the group about your own personal evolution and you can give me my performance review you and you get the last word. This is our final topic.

Angie Brown (25:40):

I mean, I think that at the end of the day, what we've all always known, right, is we're in this business because we want to solve problems for our customers. That's how I got into software development. It was about solving a problem that hadn't been solved, and it was about creating value in an area that could benefit from that. I think that one of the things along the way as we looked at these initiatives was, I mean at this point when you joined, we probably had two or three examples where we were multi-year in for large scale waterfall initiatives that once we finally got 'em implemented, they just were not successful. And no one can look at that and be excited about that model because again, go back to what I got into this industry for was to help add value, help solve problems. We weren't doing that even if we were getting work across the finish line.

(26:39):

So I remember some of the first sessions that we were in, I remember pulling you aside because I would ask a lot of questions as we were going in. It was seeking to understand questions, but I was concerned that those questions seemed like that they were derogatory in nature. I was challenging. I was like, I'm not challenging. I want to understand. And so to be able to have that type of conversation and really debate some things and get to a point of common understanding, I think was great. It is constant. One of the things that we haven't hit on, and I know we're right at time, is that we get a working team up and evolved and things of that nature, and then we get a new hire and from a different area, et cetera, for a different company that operated in a different way.

(27:28):

And at the altitude that I operate in, these are high powered people within the company and they come in with a different perspective. And so some of the training then starts over. And so I think the evolution for me, definitely, I love being as close to the customer outcomes as we can be and living in a world where that's what we focus on is energy inducing for sure. And it's great to focus on that. It can also be, like I said, it can require some tenacity, but I think you've got to wrap your mindset around how that's not a failure point. It's not a failure that it requires tenacity and to keep going. It's not a failure of the methodology, it's not a failure of your team, it's just a reality because people are people. They all come to us with different experiences. And so overall, it's definitely been beneficial and I think it's been beneficial for the company as well, not just for me, when we see what we're able to deliver to our customers.

Paul Gaffney (28:31):

Fabulous. Thanks Angie.

Angie Brown (28:32):

Thank you.

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