A High-Stakes Cloud Migration
Emerging from the financial crisis in 2008, the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) mandated that financial institutions strive for greater resilience, flexibility, and scalability in the marketplace. One financial organization sits at the intersection of these regulatory measures, operating under significant federal oversight. Each of its technology systems and operational processes has been carefully calibrated to mitigate risk and safeguard the integrity of each contract and the financial market.
Leadership knew the current operating system, built on a 2-decades-old solution architecture, was ripe for modernization. Considering this, the organization undertook a project to replace its current technology solution with a new, AWS cloud-based system. This transformation would make major changes to its organizational structure and core operating processes. This organization turned to Point B to help embark on this transformation.
Struggling in Siloes
A Project Management Office (PMO) was put in place to oversee this transformation. The program was structured into separate delivery workstreams for infrastructure, testing, change management, platform development, and other functional areas. Platform development teams were made up of internal team members, professional services leaders, and vendor resources who struggled to collaborate.
Independent contractors prioritized their project delivery over the cross-functional collaboration required to ensure each product was successfully integrated within the overall platform. The cultural roots of competition made the program struggle to meet scope, schedule, and budget commitments with these projects, organization, and resource models in place.
The organization’s recently hired Head of Enterprise Transformation—responsible for the PMO—saw with fresh eyes the risk that these disjointed, siloed teams posed to the success of this migration. At stake so far was a 9-figure investment, years of work, and the stability of core systems in an environment where risk mitigation was paramount.
Moving forward, Point B was at the center of making collaboration happen.
Getting to New Ways of Working
This customer knew that going from competition to collaboration first required transforming its PMO’s talent strategy.
By partnering with us, the institution could replace its collection of independent PMs with Point B as a managed service. Our team of PMs came in already motivated to work better together as one team and bridge-builders across products and workstreams. Sourcing PM talent from a single vendor aligned incentives across projects, streamlined onboarding, talent management, and knowledge sharing, and provided cost-efficiency at scale.
Moving forward, Point B was at the center of making collaboration happen.
As we worked together, teams leveraged Agile methods and tools, quickly adapting and responding to new resource needs for business analysts, scrum masters, and other specialized roles. Establishing a Transformation Center of Excellence with a diverse group of Point B senior leaders helped teams manage risks and created a culture of continuous improvement.
Our Approach
- Focus on the customer
- Balance immediate needs and long-term goals
- Demonstrate the change needed to meet outcomes
- Go beyond the role to drive value
- Show up as a cohesive brand
The Outcomes
Together, we created value in cost, operational, and collaboration efficiencies at scale. Our team of more than 4+ dozen program managers, project managers, scrum masters, and business analysts drove transformation from the inside out. The cultural cohesion fostered across the PMO and within core stakeholder groups accelerated this customer’s time to outcome. The Center of Excellence streamlined communication, making it easier for teams to amplify important messaging to leadership and channel resolutions back to the right teams on the ground.
We collaborated closely with customer-led teams to redesign critical processes, validate solutions, and drive cross-functional collaboration. The new operating model helped this PMO go beyond the boundaries of what the Executive Committee imagined was possible for an initiative of its size and scale.
Key Results
2x
increase in delivery velocity
70%
improvement in plan attainment
75%
improvement in plan quality and transparency
A proactive approach was adopted to control project scope, address schedule deviations, and manage the budget forecast. This included mitigating delays by improving planning completeness, enhancing transparency, and implementing robust risk management. The organization is set up for success to launch its new cloud-based platform.
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