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Modivcare’s product operating model began as an attempt to solve an organizational problem: after years of acquisitions, business areas had separate technology stacks, delivery practices, and ownership of similar capabilities. The company first aligned product leaders with individual executives, then centralized its product teams under CIO Jessica Kral after about six months. The aim was to make business and technology jointly accountable for durable capabilities and outcomes, rather than treating technology as an order-taking function. The account comes from a March 5, 2025, CIO interview with Kral; it describes the change but does not publish independently verified performance results.
Why Modivcare changed its technology model
Modivcare provides services intended to connect people with healthcare. Its growth through acquisitions left parts of the business operating with separate technology stacks and delivery models. According to Kral, technology often acted as an order taker: business leaders could buy software or engage development firms independently, while different teams built similar capabilities. The result was a more complex technology footprint and weaker enterprise-wide coordination.
This was more than a systems-modernization problem. When accountability sits within separate business units, each local solution may make sense on its own while the company as a whole accumulates duplicated workflows, vendors, data structures, and product decisions. Modivcare’s stated response was to organize work around business capabilities and products that could be prioritized across the enterprise.
What a product operating model means here
“Product operating model” is not one universal organizational blueprint. At Modivcare, it refers to persistent ownership of business capabilities and products, closer partnership between business and technology, and shared choices about what work matters. A product may be a platform, workflow, API, or internal capability—not only an app used directly by a consumer.
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| Project-centric approach | Product- and capability-centric approach |
|---|---|
| Temporary initiative with a defined scope, deadline, and budget | Ongoing ownership of a product or business capability |
| Business submits requirements for technology to deliver | Business and product teams jointly define problems and priorities |
| Success is often framed around completing delivery | Success is assessed over time through outcomes, adoption, and improvement |
| Accountability may end at launch | Ownership continues through the product lifecycle |
| Local teams may optimize separately | Teams consider which capabilities should be shared across the enterprise |
Agile methods can support product work, but agile delivery alone does not establish product ownership. Nor does changing job titles: decision rights, funding, team composition, accountability, and measures of success determine whether the organization has actually changed how it works.
Why Modivcare chose a capability lens
Kral’s rationale was to connect technology work to company strategy. Leaders need to understand what capabilities the enterprise has, how those capabilities interact, which ones create service or revenue value, and where multiple teams may be building essentially the same thing. The goal is to make prioritization and reuse visible across business areas rather than evaluating every request as a standalone project.
The change also had executive sponsorship. Kral described CEO Heath Sampson’s vision for a product operating model as part of the impetus, rather than presenting the effort as a CIO-only process improvement. That distinction matters: if product priorities are meant to span business units, executives must participate in resolving trade-offs.
How the operating model evolved
First, Modivcare tried federation
Kral considered two broad organizational choices: a federated model, with product leaders aligned to business areas, and a centralized model, with product teams brought together in one organization. Modivcare began with the federated option. Each senior executive received a product leader, and those leaders formed a center of excellence intended to develop common practices for engagement, discovery, prioritization, delivery, and collaboration.
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Federation can preserve local context and make an initial transition less disruptive in a diversified company. Its risk is that product practices and priorities can vary by domain, while enterprise-wide standards and shared capabilities remain difficult to establish.
Then it centralized product teams
Progress was initially “slow but steady,” Kral said. Product leaders were in high demand and were pulled into multiple initiatives, which limited the time they could devote to establishing the new model. After roughly six months, Modivcare moved product teams under Kral’s organization.
That shift raised a concern: would product lose its independence by sitting under a CIO? Kral framed the change as creating a distinct “Product and Technology” organization with its own culture, structure, and goals—not simply adding product management to traditional IT. The interview explains the rationale and sequence, but does not establish that centralization is the right choice for every company.
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The useful choice depends on where the organization needs consistency and where it needs close business alignment. A hybrid can centralize product standards, talent development, platform strategy, and enterprise governance while embedding product managers in business domains. It needs clear funding and outcome accountability, plus explicit ways to resolve conflicts between domains.
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| Structure | Potential strengths | Risks to manage |
|---|---|---|
| Federated | Local business context; close executive relationships; potentially easier initial adoption | Uneven practices, competing roadmaps, duplicated capabilities, and product leaders stretched across local work |
| Centralized | Consistent methods, clearer talent management, and stronger opportunity for enterprise prioritization and reuse | Business units may feel less ownership; central teams may become detached from users; product can be treated as a technical delivery function |
| Hybrid | Shared standards and governance alongside domain-level product knowledge | Requires explicit decision rights, funding responsibilities, and escalation paths for cross-domain conflicts |
What changed in Modivcare’s service lines
Personal Care Services
Modivcare introduced a common platform across Personal Care Services markets, where services are delivered mainly by small independent businesses with local-community relationships. Kral described the platform as a way to improve visibility and effectiveness. The interview does not identify its vendor, architecture, deployment timeline, number of markets, cost, or measured operational effect.
Non-Emergency Medical Transportation
For Non-Emergency Medical Transportation, clients could use APIs to share eligibility information or integrate ride booking into their own portals and applications. This is an example of product work aimed at an external organization’s workflow: the capability is valuable not just as a Modivcare interface, but as a way for clients to connect information and booking into their own services.
Product management requires different language and real trade-offs
Kral identified confusion between product management and project management as a communication challenge. Calling a role “product manager” does not make it strategic. Depending on the organization, the role may include discovering problems, defining outcomes, developing roadmaps, aligning stakeholders, prioritizing investment, reviewing adoption, and managing a product throughout its lifecycle.
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The language of capabilities can help teams see shared services and relationships between business processes and technology. It also makes duplication easier to discuss: two teams may have separate projects but be solving parts of the same enterprise capability.
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A strategic prioritization process necessarily rejects some requests. To preserve trust, leaders should publish decision criteria and explain trade-offs rather than imply that every proposal will make the roadmap. A practical set of criteria can include:
- Alignment with company strategy and impact on clients or members.
- Regulatory or contractual necessity and risk reduction.
- Revenue, margin, or service-quality potential.
- Reuse across service lines and dependencies on data or integration.
- Delivery complexity, confidence in the expected outcome, and cost of delay.
The interview describes a strategic lens and the need for transparency, but does not specify Modivcare’s scoring model, funding authority, roadmap forum, or conflict-resolution process. Those mechanisms should be made explicit in any organization adopting a similar model.
Why sequencing financial integration matters
Modivcare initially tried to integrate financial-management processes early. Kral said the organization was not mature enough for that step, and that the effort slowed progress and created frustration. The practical lesson is not to ignore financial management, but to introduce complex funding mechanics after people understand product ownership, capabilities, and shared prioritization.
- Address immediate business pain points and clarify who owns the work.
- Establish common language around products and capabilities.
- Build shared discovery, engagement, and prioritization practices.
- Develop organizational maturity and clarify decision rights.
- Then add more integrated financial-management processes that support ongoing product ownership.
What the product model can—and cannot—do for AI
Modivcare describes its Product and Technology organization as a foundation for intelligent automation, generative AI, and more digital-first interactions. A clear product owner, reusable capabilities, governed data access, and cross-functional prioritization can help an organization decide where AI belongs and who remains accountable after a pilot.
Best Value
Those conditions do not prove that an AI initiative is valuable or safe. Each use case still needs suitable data, privacy and security controls, testing of outputs, operational oversight, and measures tied to a real outcome. The interview names no specific AI system, production deployment, governance control, or measured result; it supports describing AI as a planned direction, not a demonstrated benefit of the reorganization.
A practical way to adapt the approach
- Map capabilities and ownership. Identify the business functions the organization performs, the systems that support them, and who makes decisions today.
- Find fragmentation. Look for duplicated applications, vendors, workflows, data structures, and gaps in end-to-end accountability.
- Define product domains. Group persistent capabilities around users, services, or business outcomes rather than treating every request as a temporary project.
- Choose governance deliberately. Decide what should be centralized, embedded, or shared; define decision rights, escalation routes, and funding responsibilities.
- Give product leaders capacity and authority. Avoid assigning them transformation duties on top of an unmanageable volume of delivery work.
- Standardize discovery and prioritization. Make roadmaps explicit choices, with criteria leaders can explain to teams whose requests are deferred.
- Measure outcomes, not just output. Track whether capabilities are used, reliable, reusable, and producing the intended service or business results.
- Sequence financial and AI changes. Build clear ownership and data practices before layering on complex funding models or automation initiatives.
How to tell whether the model is working
Modivcare’s interview does not report measured delivery, cost, adoption, or service outcomes. Organizations applying the model can establish a baseline and track a balanced set of indicators, such as:
- Time from a validated problem to a usable release.
- Adoption and active use, or completion rates for important client tasks.
- Reuse of shared capabilities and reduction in duplicate applications.
- Cost to operate a capability, alongside reliability and incident rates.
- Delivery predictability and progress against stated product outcomes.
- Client, employee, and stakeholder satisfaction.
These are suggested measures, not results reported by Modivcare. Metrics should be selected to match each product’s purpose; counting releases alone can reward activity without showing whether a service improved.
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The March 2025 interview documents an operating-model shift: Modivcare moved from acquisition-shaped technology fragmentation toward capability-oriented product ownership, tried federation, and then centralized product teams while presenting the new group as Product and Technology. It gives concrete service-line examples and a candid lesson about trying financial integration too early. It does not provide independently audited evidence that the model reduced costs, improved customer satisfaction, shortened delivery times, or produced specific AI outcomes. The transferable idea is shared accountability for products and capabilities—not centralization as an end in itself.
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