Re-Platforming - Managing a Quality Service

Managing a Quality Service

A key service of the organisation had been built using a large third-party component which was under performing and inefficient.

I was tasked to re- platform the service, moving to an internally supported infrastructure, limiting disruption to our user community, increasing throughput and reducing costs.

With limited internal resource available I needed to source and onboard a delivery partner team, agree the scope and produce a paper that would be scrutinized, for approval to undertake the work.

This was a hugely sensitive area of the business, and to bring people on the journey to achieve the outcomes would require, compassion, empathy and clear understanding of people’s roles and responsibilities.

Engaging the operational team, to set the scene and establish the objective, I quickly identified the key stakeholder groups and professions across the business. To gain buy in I met with each group and gained a clear understanding of their own concerns and needs connected to the service.

Taking on board their concerns and obtaining confidence in the outcomes, I produced an agreed list of objectives and through coordination of development teams, was able to forecast a timescale for completion. Working with finance colleagues I then apportioned projected costs and produced a paper that I could take to our executive teams to bid for funding.

Successfully achieving this and acutely aware of resource pressures across the organisation, I met with profession heads and using the outcomes as measures gained agreement to ring fence the allocated resource for the duration of the project.

Maintaining regular contact with the team through an established reporting line, and attendance at ceremonies, provided me with clear understanding of progress whilst making sure the work remained aligned to the road map and stakeholders were informed of planned releases, and their outcomes.

I ensured regular communication was supported and the messaging was clear, increasing confidences in our approach and ensuring a clear path to allow incremental releases to occur.

I used established statistics, and live feedback from our user community to promote and celebrate successes, alongside identifying pain points to be overcome. This allowed us to demonstrate in plain language the benefits that were realized and the stated objectives we met.

The new service continues to process more than 100,000 transactions a day and the cost saving’s are showing as 84%.