Silver Lake Partners makes its pile taking tech companies private and then public again, and it looks like the firm is on track to make another pile after taking San Mateo, California-based Serena Software private.

Big wins for the buyout shop include Seagate; SilverLake tossed in $324 million taking it out of the market and $1.9 billion flew out when the firm put it back in play. SilverLake’s trick is to overhaul a company’s capital structure—taking on debt instead of parting with equity—and then reshape operations for growth.

Serena, a maker of change management software, delisted from the Nasdaq just over a week ago. Now that the $1.2-billion deal is done, the heavy lifting begins as the company works to double revenue, to $500 million, in three years.

CEO Mark Woodward says Serena will experiment with new sales models, expand into Asia, grow its services, and streamline management—projects it couldn’t have done as easily as a public company constantly under the gun to meet quarterly earnings targets.

It might have, for instance, spent $1 million to translate its software into foreign languages and get sales offices up and running abroad. But fear of missing an earnings estimate had management spread that investment out over nine months, forfeiting an earlier crack at the market. Now it can focus on improving long-term earnings.

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Mr. Woodward will be able to play with revenue models until they’re just right—and streamline management. (He made a start by eliminating the chief operating officer position.) And without the hassle of dealing with “public company issues,” Mr. Woodward estimates he has won back 30 to 40 percent of his time to focus on operations.

SilverLake brings a lot to the deal, beyond the $349 million in cash it fronted for the leveraged buyout. The firm hired Bain Consulting to dig into three years’ worth of invoices to find what Serena’s customers were buying. SilverLake worked with Mr. Woodward to interpret Bain’s findings and come up with a plan.

SilverLake partners David Roux and John Joyce and director Hollie Moore also joined Serena’s board. The three helped Serena work through its strategy. Mr. Woodward expects Mr. Joyce, the former head of IBM Global Services, to help expansion into Asia.