Stories from the front line – Banking
Here’s an interesting case study for you. Again, it’s a true story from the front line vault, and after you’ve read the list of findings, you might give some thought, before reading on, as to how you might have dealt with this project. Where to begin? What are the core issues? And importantly, how do you resolve those issues and get straight to work on the best quality processes to reach successful outcomes?
Aim of the project: Transfer equity investments held for clients to a new entity
Constraints: A data migration was not possible and the project had to close out of the market and then transfer the holdings to the new entity.
History: The project was scheduled to take 10 months and was highly governed and reported. Several external reviews were held and these relied on apparent compliance with governance structures, project practices and reporting. All of these consistently showed green.
Review: At the eight month mark the Board sought yet another independent review but this time from the perspective of actual readiness.
Findings:
- The paper trail and meeting records were detailed and compliant in every respect
- The project manager was a nervous wreck and he tried to reconcile the picture available through compliance and what he ‘felt’ about the project.
- Escalation by the project manager was responded to with platitudes and assurance that it would all be ok.
- The processes allowed that the people involved would be able to be held blameless if anything went wrong
- There was a general nervousness at the worked level on the project and a frustration that those above them weren’t listening to the actual problems and risks
- The project team felt isolated by the governance and reporting
- There was a deal of ‘intellectual avoidance’ being applied where niggling questions and unresolved issues were not pursued.
- There was no tolerance for raising and exploring dissenting views
- There was a history of dissenters and people asking for additional resources to be removed from the project
- There was no evidence that testing was or would be adequate, escalation processes were not in place, there was inadequate highlighting of the extent of the risk and that there was no possible fall back position.
- Inadequate thought had gone into the reputational and market risk associated with the project and the people at the very top of the organisation were not at all aware of the risk that was being accepted. (There was no way to mitigate the risk but there was seriously inadequate effort applied to making sure decisions were being made by the people and at the level where responsibility was held)
- There were examples of decisions being taken at the technical level without visibility or involvement of the people whose decisions they would rightly be.
- It was not possible to assess that the actual project was under control – in spite of the governance and compliance being actively adhered to.
Remedy:
- Held a meeting with all project team members from top to bottom, including the sponsor and walked through what would happen from the time go/no go was called. It became immediately apparent that there was a lot of work to do in a number of areas – not just the IT readiness.
- Appointed people who would each be responsible for the new operating model, training, customer interface, management expectation setting
- Went to daily war room meetings
- Involved the board and apprised them of the risks and explained the mitigation strategies as well as the potential actions required of them should risks be realised.
- Moved to a ‘truth in reporting’ model for within the project – external reporting to the PMO continued to be compliant with requirements (no one wanted the PMO to try to help out)
Outcomes:
This was a very successful project with the risks not realised and the go live running smoothly. However, it would have been a very different story if the project processes and reporting had remained as the only check point. Project management had forgotten the paperwork isn’t the project – something had to be delivered.
When complications arise in the heady world of banking, especially the unpredictable business of planning out equity investment transfers, there’s no option but to calmly tackle the project from the ground up, look to those core issues to find solutions and disentangle the twists before they become knots.
A key element in the success of this project was continual focus on delivering the required outcome, and of course this should always remain an outstanding PM’s manifesto.
Don’t forget to share your comments on this or any other related topics – I’d be interested in hearing from you! … Diane