My Client sought entry to the Open Banking ‘Confirmation of Payee Responder’ market in the UK and was advised on my First day in role by Pay UK that their deadline to complete technical compliance was now within 6 weeks rather than within 6 Months! Every one in the company assumed that this was impossible or close to impossible and that market entry would be delayed to March 2025. I volunteered to find a way to hit the new deadline for go live of May 17th 2024.

I was encouraged/volunteered to find a way to get a new Agile team up and running and focused to achieve the compliance completion by May 17th, despite this looking like a 10% or less chance of success. Day One I had just an existing Business Analyst to turn to who had experience with implementing a Confirmation of Payee ‘Requestor’ solution purely for Internal use.

Firstly I pushed for the existing BA to be able to help support the planning and implementation throughout. This was pushed back on by their Manager and I was informed that a new Contractor BA would come in in my Second Week. So I ensured that the original BA would have to fully handover before he could back off and that I had access to all the background work and reference documents.

Next step I tracked down an existing Contractor Architect/Developer who had also been involved in the Internal Solution implementation. I engaged his commitment to help find a way to stand a chance to deliver a solution within the compliance period. In my second week the new Contractor BA came in and I formed a lead team of 3, including the Architect/Dev to plan out how to achieve our target.

The critical next action was prioritising and sequencing timescales for 7 separate distinct technical deliverables with the Architect/Dev. I asked if it was possible to parallel track 2 sets of the deliverables by splitting out the Open Banking Scrum Team? I was advised YES, BUT we need additional resources – one extra DEV and one extra QA. Our initial Scrum team was entirely formed of contractors – with 1 QA and 3 Developers. The QA was imminently due to go on paternity leave. Sprint 1 was all about forming a focused team from the 4 Contractors.

I built a proposal to gain approval from the Board of my Employer for the extra resources, and demonstrated how this would work in terms of delivering the 7 Technical Milestones within 2 Sprints and ensuring the 7 key deliverables would work together holistically. All 7 were required for the solution to work at scale.

A final Critical action was to identify any ‘blockers’, potential obstacles for achieving the target. There were 3, and I worked up workarounds and mitigation plans to remove these risks to successful delivery. This required sign off by the CTO and gaining the 2 extra resources immediately, which I secured in an ad hoc meeting with the CTO.

Beyond this I kept my finger on the pulse of the progress versus our plan and any
setbacks/fixes required. In the last 2 weeks I gained an extra QA to cover the testing and certification requirements.

Replace this leading sentence with an intro into the things you did, if relevant including re-written versions of the bulleted lines below:

• What did you do to help… Identify, agree and prioritise new ideas and opportunities to generate business value
• What did you do to help… Enhanced cross-business collaboration, communication and buy in
• What did you do to help… Improved internal satisfaction, loyalty and customer value
• What did you do to help… Gain context and insight to enable faster, more informed decisions and actions
• What did you do to help… Clarify initiative dependencies and definition of success
• What did you do to help… More perceived objectivity without political bias

• What did you do to help… Reduce time in delivering change from skills gaps or capacity issues
• What did you do to help… Reduce ambiguity around vision, goals, strategy and roadmaps
• What did you do to help… Understand weaknesses and capability gaps to better plan for structured, feasible improvement
• What did you do to help… Reduce uncertainty around performance and time to delivering effectively
• What did you do to help… Reduce blockers to progress due to personal and structural agendas
• What did you do to help… Reduce or remove resistance to change & innovation
• What did you do to help… Reduce political bias and credibility challenges across silos
• What did you do to help… Reduce ambiguity around ownership and responsibilities

Replace this leading sentence with an intro into the things you did, if relevant including re-written versions of the bulleted lines below:

• What did you do to help… Identify, agree and prioritise new ideas and opportunities to generate business value
• What did you do to help… Enhanced cross-business collaboration, communication and buy in
• What did you do to help… Clarify initiative dependencies and definition of success

• What did you do to help… Reduce time in delivering change from skills gaps or capacity issues
• What did you do to help… Reduce uncertainty around performance and time to delivering effectively
• What did you do to help… Reduce or remove resistance to change & innovation

The Teams gelled and pulled out all of the stops to ensure that we completed all required Technical Work and QA before entering the Pay UK Certification process, which required passing over 60 Technical tests. We had to re-run a few times and fix a few issues/bugs along the way, BUT the full certification of compliance was granted by Pay UK on May 10th, one week ahead of the drop dead date.

Prior to this my employer was under the radar of Pay UK, and they never imagined that we would be capable of hitting the accelerated date . But this gained complete respect and credibility for my employer for the first time.

The whole team was able to celebrate success as was my Employer. And this has become a benchmark for the company in terms of what is possible with the right Team, Focused Planning and Smart Execution.

Replace this leading sentence with an intro into the things you did, if relevant including re-written versions of the bulleted lines below:

Typical areas where value is realised:

• What did you do to help… Increase customer acquisition, advocacy and lifetime value
• What did you do to help… Improved business agility and ability to rapidly respond to change and opportunity
• What did you do to help… Increased credibility, confidence and influence across the business
• What did you do to help… Enabling positive behavioural change
• What did you do to help… More satisfied and engaged employees with increased retention and productivity
• What did you do to help… Direct positive impact on internal and external customer satisfaction
• What did you do to help… Successful, timely delivery of evidence based transformative change
• What did you do to help… Viable, scalable and actionable roadmap to deliver innovation and change

Pains typically relieved include:

• What did you do to help… Inefficient or misaligned operating model and lack of business agility
• What did you do to help… Lack of exec sponsorship and track record
• What did you do to help… Lack of appropriate capabilities, skills, tools and methods
• What did you do to help… Misaligned goals across business and silos
• What did you do to help… Unclear or inefficient internal communications
• What did you do to help… Lack of clarity around the internal business ecosystem
• What did you do to help… Unclear business strategy and requirements

Replace this leading sentence with an intro into the things you did, if relevant including re-written versions of the bulleted lines below:

Typical areas where value is realised:

• What did you do to help… Fostering a human centric, transparent, trustworthy and agile culture
• What did you do to help… Improved business agility and ability to rapidly respond to change and opportunity
• What did you do to help… Enabling positive behavioural change
• What did you do to help… Successful, timely delivery of evidence based transformative change

Pains typically relieved include:

• What did you do to help… Lack of appropriate capabilities, skills, tools and methods
• What did you do to help… Inefficient or misaligned operating model and lack of business agility
• What did you do to help… Unclear or inefficient internal communications
• What did you do to help… Misaligned goals across business and silos

• agile delivery
• Business transformation
• technology leadership
• collaboration
• IT Strategic Planning

• Organisational Agility & Effectiveness

• Financial Services