It's really really hard to come up with explicit actionable advice when a core part of your argument is that you need to do what is right for your team/company. To extend my TDD analogy, it would be like trying to write tests for someone else's codebase without any context.

If you want some specific feedback for your team, please reach out to me on Twitter. I'm always thrilled to talk to people about process and organizational development. I'd love to chat with you about actionable ideas for your specific need.