A business unit was required to implement a regulatory compliance change delivery to a strict deadline.

I was tasked with completing and overseeing the design for the technical solution through to delivery. I inherited some requirements and a design that had been part implemented.

I realised that the business unit had misinterpreted the regulatory ask and had come up with their own view of the requirements, which would not have met with the regulator’s approval when they were deployed. There had been no dialogue with the regulator ahead of implementation to verify we were on the right lines. I liaised with colleagues in another business unit who had already had experience of delivering the regulatory changes (based on their interactions with the regulator and knowledge learnt ‘the hard way’) to challenge and reword the requirements so that there would be regulatory acceptance, then I redesigned the solution to meet the new requirements.

Despite this late reset of requirements and solution, we were able to get the changes deployed to live on time and accepted by the regulator, thus avoiding possible fines and reputational damage.