Have you delivered a successful project?

We have all been involved in projects that go wrong, in fact I personally enjoy projects that are broken and need a review / improvement to re-align the delivery within reasonable timescales.

But have you been involved in a project that delivered the intended business case objectives and benefits?

I was lucky enough to be a part of a huge integration of 2 banks a few years ago, I’m sure you can guess which one and this showed me how to run and deliver successful programmes across a global bank impacting every member of staff.

So what did I learn during one of the best times of my career.

• The Business and IT teams working together was key, we sat on the same floor (within walking distance to ensure we worked together and communicated effectively)
• Clear governance and reporting supported the successful delivery to allow us to report upwards the items that needed support/decision
• Pragmatic governance and audit allowed a fast paced environment
• Detailed Planning across every team and business area to ensure everyone was aligned
• Team work – I’ve never been involved in a Programme delivery where every single person worked together towards the same goal.
• Testing and data – without structured testing and good data to confirm validity of the tests it would never have gone live

What did we achieve?  

We completed and reconciled 126bn across 30m accounts to the penny…..allowing the bank to Go Live and integrate the systems and processes.

An achievement and learning experience I’ve taken forward into APS.