--- title: "Turntide — 8-workstream strategic audit" description: "Case study: catalogued every active project across 8 workstreams at Turntide, cut ~50, and stood up the tiger-team model that ran what was left." source: https://sukisong.com/work/turntide-audit/ updated: 2026-07-30 --- # Turntide — 8-workstream strategic audit Audited 8 workstreams against two goals. Cut roughly 50 projects. Helped deliver the tiger-team model that ran what was left. Senior Business Program Manager at Turntide Technologies, remote. 2020 – 2023, the final two quarters of my tenure. The Chief of Staff handed me a cross-functional program that ran straight into the executive room, on a two-quarter clock. I turned the company’s project portfolio into a triaged backlog and a new operating model. ## At a glance - Role — Senior Business Program Manager - Company — Turntide Technologies - Tenure — 3 years across 4 roles - Window — The final two quarters of tenure - What I owned — Built the master project catalogue across all 8 workstreams from Jira, Zendesk, Monday.com, and stakeholder documents. Designed the audit framework and dashboard in Excel. Led the in-person audit conference line-by-line. Ran the post-audit status cadence. Presented findings up to SVP-and-Board level. - Who I partnered with — Chief of Staff (mentor, SME input); an external product-strategy consultancy that shaped the post-audit tiger-team operating model; workstream leads across Operations, Logistics, Customer Success, Sales, Engineering (Hardware and Software), Technical Services, Product, and Marketing; SVP of Customer Success and a Board member in the audit-readout room; C-Suite as the upward escalation path. **8** — Workstreams audited line-by-line **2 quarters** — Catalogue, audit, presentation, operating model **~5** — OKRs / projects per tiger team, post-audit focus ## Context Eight workstreams were each running their own active project portfolios in parallel, in their own tools, against their own definitions of priority. The company’s stated focus was the 10,000-motor channel transition and a path to profitability. The portfolio in practice was wider than that. The Chief of Staff needed someone to catalogue every workstream’s projects into one place, audit them line-by-line against the two company-level goals, and surface what to cut, pause, or keep. The program had cross-functional breadth, executive-room visibility, and no time to do it slowly. He handed it to me. I did the dirty work and ran the status meetings; he gave SME input where it mattered. ## Approach ### Build the master catalogue Pulled every active project across all 8 workstreams — Operations, Logistics, Customer Success, Sales, Engineering (Hardware and Software), Technical Services, Product, Marketing — from where the data actually lived: Jira, Zendesk, Monday.com, stakeholder documents, and a lot of conversations. Built the master file in Excel with a dashboard on top so the audit could be navigated in one place instead of eight. ### Audit against two goals Held an in-person audit conference. Reviewed every project on the master file line by line against two and only two questions: - Does this advance the 10,000-motor channel transition? - Does this advance profitability? Anything that couldn’t answer yes to at least one was a candidate to cut or pause. Owners were in the room. Decisions happened in the room. ### Deliver the tiger-team operating model The post-audit operating model was designed with an external product-strategy consultancy, whose frame of lean cross-functional tiger teams matched the company’s operating constraints. The workstream-siloed backlog was replaced with mixed cross-functional groups pulled from across the 8 workstreams, each focused on roughly five OKRs / projects at a time. I helped deliver. Ran the status cadence on the new operating model; coordinated cross-workstream staffing; surfaced friction back to leadership; kept the master file alive as the system of record for what the tiger teams were actually shipping against. **8** — Workstreams audited line-by-line against two company goals ## Receipts - Catalogued every active project across all 8 workstreams into a single master file with an audit dashboard, pulling from Jira, Zendesk, Monday.com, and stakeholder documents. - Held an in-person line-by-line audit conference against the 10K-motor and profitability gates. Cross-functional owners in the room; decisions in the room. - Cut roughly 50 projects; paused many more. Recommendations adopted. - Helped deliver the tiger-team operating model — designed with an external product-strategy consultancy. Lean cross-functional groups pulled from across all 8 workstreams, each focused on ~5 OKRs / projects. Designed as a temporary structure for the operating window; survived past my departure. - Presented findings to the SVP of Customer Success and a Board member. Escalation path prepared for the C-Suite. - Externally validated. Ambrish Chitnis (senior leader at Turntide, outside my reporting line) wrote a LinkedIn recommendation naming this work specifically. From chaos to a triaged backlog and a new operating model in two quarters. ## In hindsight The hardest tradeoff was honestly my health. In retrospect I gave it too much, and the mission too much. I took on something that was not meant for one person; it was meant for a team. The work landed — Ambrish’s recommendation speaks to that — and I still wonder whether a properly staffed program would have yielded even more. What I carried forward: scope-to-staffing is a conversation that belongs at the start of a program, not after. Lead with what we’re trying to solve, then make the resourcing match the ambition. ## Stack - Excel — Master project file and audit dashboard. - Jira — Engineering and product project ingest. - Zendesk — Customer-Success and Technical-Services workstream ingest. - Monday.com — Operations and Marketing workstream ingest. - Stakeholder documents — Direct from workstream leads where no system of record existed. ## External validation **Q: Ambrish Chitnis — Senior leader at Turntide, outside Suki’s reporting line (Full LinkedIn recommendation, November 2022)** “Suki did not hesitate, jumped in head first, constructively challenged status quo, and diligently turned chaos into organization and clarity. She pulled a large team together and really delivered on a huge endeavor for the company.”