Iteright vs. McKinsey Wave - The Strategic Operating System That Connects Strategy to Results

Where Wave provides financial projections, Iteright delivers real outcome visibility, disciplined validation, and end-to-end alignment from strategic goals to execution in the tools your teams already

Wave is a static, finance-first view of programs and projected benefits. Iteright is a living Strategic Operating System that connects strategy, prioritization, execution, and real outcomes – integrated with the tools your teams already use, and built around outcome visibility and disciplined validation.

Iteright vs. McKinsey Wave

Organizations today need more than a financial rollup of programs — they need a system that connects strategic intent to day-to-day execution and proves whether investments are actually delivering results. While tools like McKinsey Wave offer high-level program tracking and projected financial benefits, they do not bridge the gap between strategy, planning, and delivery. They sit above the work, not inside it. Iteright was designed specifically to solve this disconnect by acting as the AI Strategic Operating System that links strategy → plans → execution → real outcomes, integrated directly into ServiceNow, PPM, Jira, and the systems teams already use. Where Wave provides static benefit assumptions, Iteright provides true outcome visibility, disciplined validation, and continuous alignment across every level of the organization.

Why Iteright Is Fundamentally Different

• Not just financial projections — real impact tracking. Iteright captures expected vs. actual results tied to leading and lagging metrics, replacing manual benefits-realization spreadsheets and Access databases.

• Not just a C-suite reporting layer — a connected operating system. Integrates deeply with ServiceNow demand, PPM governance, Jira/ADO execution, and existing planning processes.

• Standardized, AI-guided decision-making. Every initiative is evaluated through a repeatable validation model (problem, impact, alignment, risk, feasibility, confidence) to eliminate opinion-driven prioritization.

• Live view of strategy-to-execution. Continuous alignment from strategic goals and budgets down to epics and tickets, detecting drift early and highlighting misaligned work.

• Purpose-built for portfolio complexity. Designed for multi-product, multi-BU environments where planning, execution, and benefits must be reconciled across Retirement, EB, Life, and Annuities.

• Executive-ready narratives instantly. AI generates board-level reports that previously required weeks of manual PowerPoint work.

• Designed for ongoing operations, not Big 4 consulting cycles. Iteright becomes the internal operating system the organization uses every week, not just during a McKinsey engagement.

Category	McKinsey Wave	Iteright
Primary Purpose	C-suite program & benefit tracking tool focused on reporting and financial projections.	AI Strategic Operating System connecting Strategy → Plans → Execution → Results across the entire organization.
Decision-Making Approach	Top-down value assumptions; limited support for initiative-level comparison or prioritization.	Disciplined Validation: standardized, AI-guided evaluation of every initiative (impact, risk, feasibility, alignment, confidence).
Connection to Execution	Sits above delivery; minimal integration into ServiceNow, PPM, Jira, or day-to-day planning.	Deep integrations with execution tools; maps real work to strategies and detects drift or misalignment in real time.
Benefits Realization	Tracks projected benefits but struggles to measure actual outcomes beyond financial estimates.	Outcome Visibility: ongoing tracking of expected vs. actual results tied to leading and lagging business metrics.
Tool Ecosystem Fit	Functions largely as a standalone consulting/reporting tool; often disconnected from business planning teams.	Unifies executive scorecards, portfolio planning, RPT-style prioritization, and delivery workflows into a single operating model.
Operational Use	Used during consulting engagements or annual cycles; not built for continuous operational alignment.	Operates as a living system used weekly across strategy, planning, PMO, product, and delivery — enabling continuous alignment and reallocation.

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2. The Core Difference in Plain Language

A Wave-style tool is very good at: “Here are the big programs we’re running, here’s the investment, and here’s what we say they should deliver financially.”

But it struggles with:

• How those programs are actually broken into initiatives and projects

• How prioritization decisions are made (still political / subjective)

• How real work in Jira/PPM/ServiceNow aligns (or doesn’t) with those programs

• How to measure whether benefits really showed up, beyond a finance estimate or after-the-fact story

Iteright is designed to solve exactly those gaps: “Here are the strategic goals, here’s how each initiative was evaluated, here’s where we’re investing, here’s what teams are actually doing in their tools, and here’s what it’s actually delivering.”

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3. Typical Problems With a Wave-Style Approach (Mapped to What We Solve)

Common issues:

• Strategy expressed as high-level themes (“Grow”) with no clear bridge to the initiatives in flight

• Prioritization by loudest voice or political pressure rather than standardized evidence

• Fragmentation:

• Demand in ServiceNow

• Planning in spreadsheets and PowerPoints

• Execution in PPM + Jira

• “Benefits” in a finance-only tool or Access DB

• Benefits realization treated as a one-time financial assumption, not a living, measurable system

• Delivery teams see no connection between their backlog and the executive view

What Iteright does differently:

• Builds a shared model of strategy with real impact metrics (leading + lagging)

• Forces every initiative through the same validation framework (problem, impact, risk, cost, capacity, alignment, confidence)

• Ingests portfolios from spreadsheets, ServiceNow, PPM, etc. into a single portfolio brain

• Connects to Jira/ADO so that execution activity can be mapped back to initiatives and goals

• Tracks expected vs. actual outcomes over time – not just whether a project finished, but whether it moved the metrics it was funded to move

• Generates AI-built executive narratives and decks from the same underlying data (not separate PowerPoint exercises)

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4. Simple Side-by-Side Example

Imagine a 5-year “Digital Retirement Experience” program with a $50M budget.

With a Wave-type system

• You create a top-down initiative in Wave for the program:

• “Digital Retirement Experience Transformation – $50M investment – projected $X benefit by 2029.”

• You track milestones, owners, and financial assumptions.

• At review time, finance and the PMO update Wave to show whether the program is “on track,” “at risk,” or “off track,” and they may adjust the benefit number.

• Delivery teams keep working in ServiceNow, PPM, Jira, but those tools are only loosely, manually reconciled to the Wave view.

• When leadership asks, “What did we actually get?”, the answer depends on manual analysis and narrative.

With Iteright

1. Strategy & Outcomes

   1. You define the specific goals under “Digital Retirement Experience”: e.g., NPS +X, self-service adoption +Y%, call volume −Z%, cost-to-serve drop, retention bump.

   2. Iteright creates an outcome dashboard with these metrics and how they’ll be measured.

2. Disciplined Validation of Ideas

   1. Every proposed initiative (e.g., “New participant portal,” “Knowledge bot for service reps,” “Agentic automation for key workflows”) is run through Iteright’s AI-guided validation model.

   2. You see ROI ranges, risk scores, and alignment for each; you can clearly see which ones are truly high-value.

3. Plan & Portfolio View

   1. Iteright builds a single portfolio model, showing where the $50M is allocated across initiatives, along with projected impact and confidence levels.

   2. This replaces the 40-column spreadsheet while still integrating with ServiceNow/PPM.

4. Execution Connection

   1. Initiatives are tied to actual work in Jira/ADO/PPM.

   2. Iteright highlights where teams are doing unmapped work that doesn’t connect to any strategic initiative.

5. Benefits Realization & Reporting

   1. Over time, Iteright tracks actual metrics vs. projected metrics.

   2. It can show, for example: “We invested $12M into three initiatives; NPS improved by 5 points, call volume dropped 12%, and cost-to-serve decreased by $X.”

   3. AI generates exec-ready views and a narrative of what’s working, what isn’t, and where to reallocate.