VISA EUROPE – Project overhead costs down by 35%, £40M saved in 2 years.
The Situation
Changes were taking too long and costing too much. New CEO wanted better responsiveness and cost control. Average project duration ~24 months. Average project leadership overhead (PMs, PgMs, PMO, etc) ~47%.
The Task
I was appointed to revise the change methodology, assurance, change tools, and project / programme manager resourcing, to reduce costs, time, and still deliver the same scope and quality.
The Action / Approach
Rewrote methodology to align Waterfall and Agile within a single interface; reduced mandatory artefacts from 78 to 17; reduced minimum PM count per project from 5 (by exception, 3) to <1; rolled out to change leaders and got them on board; did roadshow with senior stakeholders of contributing OUs (dev, test, business change, etc) and got them on board; rolled out to senior leadership and got them to agree (in that sequence); assured it, modified it based on learnings, updated change tools to match.
The Result
Reduced project overhead costs (was 47%) to 12%
Reduced average project run time (was 24 months) to 12 months
Saved over £40M in two years.