Major Corporate Bank
Scenario
The client was undertaking major change programmes to further improve its cost income ratio. These involved the design, development and roll-out of a suite of new web-based applications.
Case Study Summary
Charteris was asked to provide consultancy services to help complete the High-Level Design (HLD) phase of the Sales and Account Opening programme. The services were extended to provide an independent review of the performance of the joint client and supplier team that had conducted the HLD phase.
Situation
The High-Level Design (HLD) phase of the Sales and Account Opening programme was taking longer to complete than senior management desired, and a number of mainframe-oriented development teams were not engaging effectively with the HLD team.
Charteris Role
The consultant was given responsibility for ensuring that the HLD provided an adequate basis for the key Customer Database development team to construct detailed design specifications for its areas of functionality. Once this activity was complete the consultant was asked, by the programme management group and the project manager of the main supplier organisation, to undertake an independent review of the performance of the joint client and supplier team that had conducted the HLD phase.
Solution
The consultant won the confidence of the Customer Database mainframe development team, by ensuring that the object-oriented HLD document set was enhanced with material more accessible to, and more usable by, their staff. This enhancement placed a much stronger emphasis on the system cases being addressed by the Customer Database than had been visible in the documentation to date. This allowed the Customer Database team to engage with the programme effectively and proceed to detailed design.
The subsequent performance review made a series of recommendations designed to:
- Improve the quality of the requirements baseline that should be established before entering HLD for subsequent S&AO Waves;
- Improve the design methodology, and reduce the overall time to market of the deliverables advocated by the methodology;
- Ensure that matrix managed teams engage more effectively during HLD;
- Improve the appropriateness of HLD deliverables as a basis for the commencement of detailed design, and as basis for Business sign-off.