about us
our projects
Below is a list of the projects we have been involved with starting with the most recent.
Norwich Union, Norwich & York (06/07 – 04/08)
Position: Programme IT Delivery Manager
Achievements: Responsible for the delivery of the IT component of a number (18) of Business Change Projects, notably the GOYA pr0gramme. The GOYA programme was a £34M programme of change including the introduction of 3rd Party applications into the NU environment, significant changes to 21 existing NU applications and radical changes to the NU technical infrastructure.
Duties: The work carried out was as follows:
• Defined and established the Delivery Manager role as this was a new
role within Norwich Union.
• For each of the 18 projects carried out the following:
o Worked with the Business Change group and other stakeholders at the
project inception to identify business drivers, scope, priorities and
interdependencies
o Produced initial project plans, estimates, resource requirements, impact,
issues and risk assessment.
o Worked with the Solution Designers to develop a solution and identify
affected areas of the current IT architecture.
o Worked with procurement and legal teams in establishing contractual
relationships with 3rd party OTS suppliers, offshore outsourced design
and development teams and the initial customer base.
o Thereafter was responsible on an ongoing basis for:
Maintaining and tracking against the plan; reporting on progress and
expenditure.
Procuring and managing resources in multiple locations (York, Norwich,
Redhill and Bangalore)
Guiding the project through governance gates.
Dealing with daily issues and constant reassessment and mitigation of
risks.
Working with the Business Change and Test project managers in preparation
for User Acceptance and delivery
• Since many of the projects were working to tight deadlines, responsible
for the introduction and management of “Smart” (i.e. Agile) development
methods.
Platform Home Loans (Britannia Building Society), London (02/07-06/07)
Position: Senior Project Management Consultant
Achievements: Responsible for the design and implementation of a new Project Management Model for Platform Home Loans IT department. This was in response to falling quality standards and the perceived need for significant organizational and process-based change in the light of new commercial opportunities.
Duties: The work carried out was as follows:
• working with IT and the business to develop a 3-year combined business
and IT strategy.
• working with the planning department to develop a 3 year programme of
projects, outsourced and in-house.
• working with IT Systems Architects to develop a target architectural
model and roadmap
• analysis of existing project management methods to identify strengths
and weaknesses
• assessment of current IT skillset to identify shortfall
• design and documentation of a new IT process model including all project
management activities from concept to implementation and all service change
processes from service desk to maintenance release.
• definition of all roles and responsibilities within the new process
model.
• definition of all artifacts (documents, forms, UML models etc) and the
appropriate standards.
• implementing the above by means of presentations, training workshops
mentoring sessions and regular quality audits.
British Telecom plc : Global Services London (04/06-11/06)
Position: Project Manager: Global Services Portal
Achievements: Appointed to plan, manage and deliver BT’s Global Services Portal
Duties: The Portal was designed to provide an integrated and consistent thin-client user interface to all of BTs back-end Global Service systems (30+ systems) allowing a wide range of functionality, sales tools and white-labelled products for BTs Global Service customers. The project was managed from London but involved a large internationally divergent set of outsourced teams. This included: development teams in Minsk, Belarus and Budapest, Hungary; testing teams in Mumbai, India; design teams in Scotland, business analysis teams in various US locations, CMS teams in Dublin, Ireland and customer teams worldwide.
Key features of the project included:
• Progression from an existing “waterfall” approach project aligning
and integrating legacy systems to a wider ranging portal using “agile”
methods.
• Laying down project approach, processes, design guidelines and standards
for all future GS Portal work.
• Negotiation with outsourced suppliers over contracts, terms of service
and delivery
• Setting up a streamlined and repeatable build, test and deployment process
on a timebox principle.
• Setting up an ongoing in-life support process.
• Regular “stand-up” progress meetings on an international basis.
• Regular “hothouse” design and strategy meetings for each new phase.
• Tight control of costs and resources.
Department of Trade and Industry: Small Business Service, London
(06/05-01/06)
Position: Project Manager : BusinessLink.com - Transaction Framework Project
Achievements: Appointed to initiate, plan, manage and deliver the first phase of the Transaction Framework Project. This project was aimed at providing transaction capability to the current (content-only) BusinessLink government website and to implement the first set of transactions aimed at business start-uo.
Duties: In order to provide the capability of offering online form filling-in
for small to medium business enterprises the current Business Link website
required radical restructuring as did the project development process
within the SBS. In addition, since the forms presented were sourced in
various other owning government departments extensive stakeholder management
and negotiations were necessary. In detail, the tasks involved were the
planning, costing, resourcing, risk and issue management and day-to-day
management of in-house and supplier teams for the following:
Identification of the key forms required for the first delivery phase
from customer research.
Negotiation, agreement on MOUs and SLAs with HMCR, Information Commissioner
and Companies House on joint working practices.
Provision of new technical infrastructure to support the transaction
capability. This included: increase of capacity to support increased volumes;
integration of a Rules Engine (Ruleburst), Forms Engine (Adobe), Database
(Oracle), Content Management and MIS systems.
Capturing of user requirements, prototyping and usability testing of
the forms wizards, redesigned information architecture, payment methods,
contextual help facility and government gateway registration.
Set up of customer support facilities, training, promotion and launch
activities
Stakeholder management, planning, tracking, budget management, resourcing,
risk and issue management, submission through gated approval process and
day to day management of in-house teams and external suppliers.
Strategic planning of future phases up to end 2007.
Department of Trade and Industry: Patent Office, Newport (10/04-01/05)
Position: IT Development Consultant
Achievements: Commissioned to undertake a study of Patent Office IT system development capability in response to an unsatisfactory assessment from the OGC. Produced a two-stage report identifying (i) current strengths and weaknesses (ii) proposed changes to the organisation to remedy current problems, reduce risk and increase IT systems development capability.
Duties: After failing the OGC Gate 0 application, the Patent Office commissioned
this study to identify the principle causes for its failure and to propose
a strategy of organisational, process and technical change to improve
capability and reduce the future risk to the Patents Office IT Programme.
This involved:
Interviews with a large cross section of staff at all levels from various
departments
Review of recent, current and proposed projects and programmes within
the PO
Analysis of project management methods, quality processes and development
techniques
Analysis of current skills and resourcing.
Analysis of current management, developmental and technical infrastructure.
Proposal for organisational change, resourcing and skills acquisition
Proposal for new methods and process adoption, quality standards and
role definitions.
Detailed justification for all proposals by means of analysis results,
research materials and references
Production of detailed report and presentation to the Patents Office
directorate.
HM Customs & Excise, Southend (10/03 – 10/04)
Position: IT Development Consultant
Achievements: Responsible for implementing a profound change to HMCE’s systems development process to address serious shortcomings in current practices by designing and implementing the HMCE Systems Development Process (SDP).
Duties: The system development process change was rolled out across HMCE
as a series of timeboxed releases between January and September 2004.
In preparing it, the following activities were carried out:
Analysis of organizational needs and priorities
Collation of existing standards, processes and relevant documentation
Creation of a process model reflecting the “As Is” environment
Workshopping process development and improvement with representative
members of HMCE’s IT and project management resource pools
Creation of the newly defined detailed process expressed as multilayered
UML Activity diagrams, Product Definitions and Templates, Product breakdown
structure and milestone history, Activity Definitions, Phase descriptions,
Quality checklists, Cross lifecycle guidelines and Tool help files.
Set up “Business As Usual” processes whereby the processes would continue
to be monitored and improved after the end of the initial rollout.
Cascaded roll out of the process by means of workshops, presentations
and training courses.
Technical: The SDP Process Definition was expressed as an Intranet website and Wiki using Front Page / Dreamweaver, Visio and JavaScript to develop and Dimensions for configuration management. In all it totaled over 250 individual definitions, 30 diagrams and a website of over 600 pages. Multi-media Presentations were given using PowerPoint and animated sequences.
Department of Work and Pensions, Lytham St Annes (04/03-10/03)
Position: Enablement Manager
Achievements: Responsible for improving the project management and IT development capability within DWP
Duties: The DWP had identified specific problems in the areas of Project
Management, Quality Assurance, planning and estimating and configuration
management in their IT projects. To effect improvement in these areas
the following activities were carried out:
Analysis of organizational needs and priorities
Auditing of all current projects from a QA perspective
Creating prioritized list of “burning” issues and fixes required
Workshopping fixes with affected project members
Providing collateral material. This included: project planning templates
and guidelines, quality review checklists and milestone definitions, detailed
meeting agendas and decision points, product definitions and templates,
process guidelines, job descriptions, and resourcing guidelines.
Resourcing and set up of project office capability.
Technical: All collateral materials were created using MS-Office Products, Visio and MS-Project.
The Lord Chancellor’s Department, Westminster (06/02-04/03)
Position: Senior Delivery Manager – Libra Programme
Duties: Responsible for the delivery and rollout of the core Magistrates Court Application into the Libra Magistrates Court Programme. The core Application was responsible for all administrative and legal functions carried out by magistrates (e.g case entry, resulting, scheduling, fines and fees, warrant tracking) and had a range of electronic interfaces including the Police, DVLA and CJIT Exchange. The application had a user base of 20,000 users in 43 regional courts and approximately 400 court buildings. The overall development, rollout and migration plan covered a three year period with a development budget of £69M
Achievements:
• Worked with the LCD procurement team in identifying and liaising with
the development contractor, specifying contract prerequisites, deliverables
and service management levels, producing release, delivery and migration
plans, coordinating with other programme elements and coordinating the
production and approval of the full delivery programme with all stakeholders
leading to award of contract.
• Worked initially with the contracted development company in mobilisation,
setting up of shared programme office functions, quality processes and
development methodology, programme planning, resource planning and infrastructure
setup leading to programme readiness.
• Thereafter worked on a daily basis with the contracted development company
in monitoring progress and quality of deliverables, assessing risk, addressing
issues and facilitating and coordinating the interface between the application
delivery function and all other functions within the LCD Libra Programme.
• Part of the overall Libra Programme Team responsible for coordinating
all aspects of the programme including provision of technical infrastructure,
systems integration of core application, training and data migration,
business change implementation and coordination with other government
initiatives.
Technical: The Libra Application went through an evolution from an initial legacy system start point delivered via terminal emulation through add-on packages in C# and MS SQL-Server running on Windows 2000 over LAN and WAN. The final implemented release is developed entirely as a Java browser-based thin-client application using Oracle 9i on Linux architecture.
Egg plc, Dudley, Derby. London and Paris (2/02 – 6/02)
Position: Development Methodology Consultant
Achievements: Responsible for the roll-out of the eXtreme Programming (“XP”) methodology throughout all parts of Egg IT Delivery in order to effect a measurable improvement of IT performance. This included: implementing metrics gathering processes so that performance increases would be visible; adapting the XP method to suit Egg’s needs; training and roll-out of the methodology; identifying and sponsoring pilot projects; monitoring and “fine tuning” processes to improve performance.
Centrica, Basingstoke / Staines (4/01 –11/01)
Position: Senior Project Manager
Duties: Responsible for managing the (initiation, cost estimation, planning,
analysis, design/architecture and supplier selection of a number of Centrica
IT projects Principal duties were:
• Liaising with users and analysts to produce cost / time estimates and
initial feasibility studies
• Liaising with programme and programme office management to produce project
plans
• Working with design teams to produce object oriented designs (UML)
• Working with external suppliers or in-house development teams to see
the project through the full lifecycle.
• Full adherence to Centrica delivery methodology and PRINCE 2
Achievements: Responsible for taking the following projects from inception
to delivery:
• BusinessGas.co.uk: Analysis, Architectural Design and planning of British
Gas' new business website along with day-to-day management of the third-party
implementation team.
• Decision Engine: Provision of a historical star cluster data store taking
feeds from all AA. British Gas and Goldfish databases, providing a single
customer view, customer matching and data mart creation for CRM purposes.
(Oracle 8, SAS, Protagona)
• theAA.com: The AA's flagship website with insurance quotation, route
mapping and various member services and information
• House.co.uk: Centrica's flagship website to-be. This will incorporate
access to all domestic services operated by Centrica including: Car Insurance,
AA membership, Financial services, Gas, Electricity and Water supply,
One-Tel and Goldfish services etc. (Broadvision, Interwoven)
IBM, Brentford (6/00 - 3/01)
Position: Programme Manager : Global Systems Integration
Duties: Responsible for strategic design, set up and management of IBM's Global Systems Integration programme for client company Cable and Wireless. As IT consultancy partner to Cable and Wireless, IBM had installed and configured a number of strategic packages to handle CRM. Billing, Order Management and Fault tracking namely: Siebel, Kenan-Arbor, Archetel, Obtectel Clarify and SAP. The GSI programme was to integrate these packages around a central hub (Web Methods - Active Works) with B2B interfaces to external systems and deliver the integrated solution successfully into the business environment to support Frame/ATM, x/DSL. Web hosting and IPVPN products.
Achievements: Successfully instigated, secured funding, set up, resourced
and managed the £14M programme bringing it successfully to the end of
Phase 1 (£4.8M) on time and within cost prior to handover to Deloittes
for subsequent phases.
This included:
• Definition of strategy, scope and objectives; production of business
cases and associated detailed plans.
• Feasibility Study and Solution definition
• Analysis, design and implementation of data, event and functional configuration
and alignment changes
• Analysis, design and implementation of new end-to-end business processes
• Specification, procurement and installation of hub development and production
infrastructure; implementation of Active Works hub architecture and configuration.
• Creation of GSI group consisting of 9 static teams, 8 dynamic perform
teams spawning 9 projects
• Daily project management of the above.
• Daily management of external vendor/contractor relationships with Siebel,
WebMethods, Deloittes, and client relationships with Cable and Wireless.
Fidelity Investments Limited, Tadworth, Surrey (4/99 -5/00)
Position: Senior IT Manager
Duties: Overall responsibility for Fidelity Investments IT development programme
Achievements: Successful phased delivery of the following applications, on time and within cost. Responsible for 24 developers in 3 teams, 2 business analysts, three testers. Ensured adherence to approved development methodology, tight timeframes and strict quality standards. All the following projects used Object Oriented design technology.
• Fidelity Institutional Website (Java/C++/HTML/Dreamweaver/Weblogic/Websphere/Dynabase/getAccess)
Entirely responsible for the development and successful delivery of the
Fidelity institutional website (www.fidelitypensions.co.uk). This was
a multi company, multidepartmental cross-project with a £4M budget. The
project involved 15 development staff, 5 business analysts, 3 systems
testers, 15 user testers, 2 network administrators, 2 database administrators.
Apart from approximately 200 static html pages the website also allows
access to online reports, registration and enrolment forms, multi database
access, and three newly front-ended applications. Various parts of the
site have different levels of security ranging from login/password level
to restricted IP access for certain users. The site was delivered successfully
for phases 1 and 2 on time and within budget.
• New Joiner Project : (Three tier architecture, Java/C++/Sybase/NT4)
Pension enrolment and new joiner processing application with "fat
client" web front end and back office connection to remote record
keeping systems.
• Librarian Project: (2-tier architecture, C++/Sybase/NT4) Pensions databases
administration and maintenance application.
• Internet Enrolment: (Java/JSP/HTML/C++/Sybase) Pensions enrolment application
with web front end and back office connection to remote record keeping
systems (PMS 6000)
• Retirement Modeller (C++/Sybase/NT4). Retirement modelling application
producing projections based on client data.
• Oracle Migration: Responsible for overseeing the migration of the above
projects from Sybase to Oracle 8.
Chordiant - Prime Response Limited, Brentford, Middlesex (2/98-3/99)
Position: IT Director
Duties: Initially taken on as QA manager responsible for improving the quality of Prime Response's CRM products by departmental restructuring, introduction of quality processes and introduction of new tools, standards and management techniques. After the departure of the IT Director, promoted to IT Director, given full departmental managerial responsibility with a staff of 54 people and budget of £13M.
Achievements : Carried out end to end analysis and re-definition of the support process for existing products. This was then implemented as follows :
• Definition, resourcing and set-up of support and maintenance developers
group (28 people) Creation of support unit test environments; Definition
of software change process and standards for multi-platform products ;
Introduction of maintenance coding standards; Roll out of multi code stream
source code control tools and processes after evaluation of competing
products.
• Definition, resourcing and set-up of QA/Testing group (11 people) Creation
of multi-platform, multi-version system test environment; Definition of
test strategy, creation of test scripts and testing standards; Roll-out
of automated testing tool and processes after evaluation of competing
products
• Definition, resourcing and set-up of Release Control group (3 people)
Creation of multi-platform build environments; Definition of software
patch and maintenance release process and build standards for multi-platform
products
Instrumental in the creation, definition and management of new Prime Vantage products. This included :
• Definition, resourcing and set-up of new projects group (21 people)
• Creation of requirement analysis, design definition teams in close liaison
with sales and customer services.
• Definition and roll-out of software development methodology;
• Planning, management and resourcing of software development process
• Daily monitoring of development progress and milestone review, ongoing
risk assessment and reduction
Fidelity Brokerage Systems, Tadworth, Surrey (2/97-2/98)
Position: Senior Project Manager / QA Manager
Duties: Reporting directly to IT director and FBS-UK President. Responsible for 9 staff (direct line management) 47 staff and contractors (matrix management). Brought in specifically to rescue FBS IT department after trading restrictions imposed by the SFA (Securities and Futures Association). In general, the strategy followed was to identify problem areas, devise processes, standards, technological solutions and/or new management structures to remedy them, to implement the solution, manage ("nursemaid") the change until self perpetuating then handover to designated line managers to continue.
Achievements: Responsible for bringing the IT department from potential closure to efficient working practice and removal of SFA restrictions heading for ISO9000 and CMM assessment.
• Project Management Training : Responsible for the preparation and delivery
of Project Management training; mentoring and guidance of individual projects
and their managers.
• System Delivery Methodology : Procurement of materials, customization
of methodology (Summit-D: Coopers & Lybrand); preparation and delivery
of training courses and individual module workshops; set up of milestone
peer review and QA auditing procedures
• Change Management Process : Definition and introduction of process and
associated procedures; training of staff as appropriate; chairing of Change
Management board; specification and introduction of change management
tools (MS-Access based).
• Service Request Process : Definition of process; introduction of process
and associated procedures, training of IT staff and users as appropriate;
creation and chairing of IT/User Steering committee; specification and
introduction of Service Request tools (MS-Access/Oracle based); definition
of User Service Level Agreements.
• Documentation Control : Design and introduction of generic project document
set and individual document and notational standards; introduction of
document centralization, versioning and standards control; creation of
web-access to all company documentation.
• Release Delivery Process: Design and introduction of controlled release
planning in collaboration with out-sourced development areas and split-site
projects.
• International methods/standards coordination : Responsible for ensuring
compatibility and coordination between processes crossing company boundaries
particularly with outsourced development companies (FISC-I, Dublin, Synergo,
Future State), shared client base companies (FISC-Dallas, GBS-London,
FIL-UK and FIL-Luxembourg) and outsourced resource and tools providers
(FISC-Boston).
National Westminster Bank- Retail, Prescot Street London (5/95
-7/96)
Position: Project Management Consultant
Duties: Leader of a team of consultants tasked with rationalising, harmonising and improving the software development process within NWB
Achievements: Established a structured, uniform and coordinated approach to software development across NWB by adopting the following strategies:
• Analysis of existing NWB software development projects :This task involved
liasing with the personnel of all current NWB IT projects and analysing
the methods and techniques used in each. In particular, attention was
given to: the hardware/software development platform used ; management
techniques for tracking and control; design and development methodologies
used ; documentation and notational techniques and standards; change control;
coding standards; configuration and build control; quality control methods;
the use of design, development and production tools; re-use of libraries
and external packages. In addition the effects of project constraints,
support and training were assessed.
• Project supervision and design input: As a parallel process to the ongoing
analysis of work in progress, new projects were closely supervised to
ensure that development progressed along the right lines. This involved
input to the project plan, development strategy and systems/software architecture
design, detailed design and code reviews.
National Westminster Bank - Centre-File, London EC1, UK (6/94
- 4/95)
Position Project Manager : Mondex Smart Card Host System
Duties: Responsible for management of the above project team (7 people) from design to delivery. The project was an NT based host system controlling financial transfers using Mondex smart cards from automatic teller machines, cashpoint telephones and bank branch terminals. The system controlled the communication between a large range of financial systems involved in the processing of Mondex transfers, authorisation, reporting and fraud detection.
Achievements: Successfully brought the project to pilot implementation
stage. This involved:
• Requirements revisit and traceability checking.
• Hands-on input to the high level design of individual subsystems (Object
Oriented with Booch notation)
• Supervision and control of incremental development cycle, integrating
and testing. Configuration control.
Vodafone Ltd, Newbury, UK (2/93 - 11/93)
Position: Programme Manager
Duties: Initially responsible for the detailed hands-on management of the NICS3 Project. In addition, this project was to be the paradigm project demonstrating the use of the Object Oriented methodology and following the newly introduced Software Quality Management Process. Thereafter, acted as Programme Manager supervising the development of further projects following this standard within Vodafone.
NICS3 was a system responsible for collecting binary data from VMS and UNIX based nodes on the Vodafone cellular network and delivering it, after translation, to a VAX based network management system.
Achievements: NICS3 was delivered on time using a methodology, tools and quality system new to Vodafone. In addition 4 subsequent projects were successfully launched and brought to completion following this paradigm. One result of this was ISO 9001/EN29001/BS5750 Part 1/TickIT certification. In particular the following activities were involved:
• Project inception, planning, estimating and continuous tracking.
• Extraction, definition and analysis of external requirements
• Definition of testing criteria, acceptance, installation and handover
to support group.
• Writing of operating procedures, codes of practice, design standards
and guidelines.
• •Supervising SQMS introduction into existing and new projects throughout
the Software Engineering department
Technical: Martyn-Odell/Ptech Object Oriented methodology; C++; VAX/VMS;
HP/UNIX; Framemaker; DECDesign (under VMS). Microsoft PROJECT / Windows
3.1 / PCs; VAXstations 4000.
Ferranti International, Wythenshawe, UK (6/92 - 2/93)
Position: Project Manager : Advanced Gas Reactor Test Facility
Duties: Responsible for taking the project through from inception to delivery. The project was a critical segment of the Ada core Technology Programme providing the means of testing, establishing reliability and diagnosing faults in the hardware configuration used by the AGR.
Achievements: Successfully completed the project. Tasks accomplished
were:
• Analysis and production of a requirements specification and project
development strategy covering design methodology, integration of the third
party packages, quality assurance, requirements traceability, coding and
documentation standards, development environment and testing/acceptance
criteria.
• High and low level design using Booch and H - OOD object Oriented methods.
Coding of prototype system (OO-C and OO-Ada).
• Liaison with hardware and supplemental software vendors and the project
clients.
Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems (SNI) Bracknell, UK (8/90
- 1/92)
Position: Project Manager: NESSI (New Electronic Sales System In-Store)
Duties: Responsible for management of the above project from inception
to delivery.
NESSI was an in-store EFTPOS system running under SCOUnix on networked
workstaions allowing product selection, reservation and delivery booking,
credit vetting, electronic funds transfer and back office reporting functions,
linked to a number of related AS400 based systems. Developed using Object
Oriented design methods and C++. Released on fast-prototype basis.
Achievements: Successfully delivered the above project. This involved
the following tasks:
• Project inception: establishment of project plan; selection and definition
of design, development and documentation methods, platform and tools;
help with resourcing.
• Requirements definition: liaison with clients, detailed analysis of
user requirements; detailed definition of software requirement.
• High level software design; user interface detailed design; coding in
C++ of demo system.
• General planning, day-to-day co-ordination and progress monitoring of
project development.
Alcatel TTG, Marcoussis, Paris, France (3/89 - 4/90)
Position: Senior Project Management Consultant : ACASE-D
Duties: Part of a team responsible for establishing a "preferred
methods basket" of design methodologies and support tools for all
Alcatel project areas world-wide and the co-ordination introduction of
these into all Alcatel projects. In particular this involved:
• Research into different design methodologies, development strategies
and notation standards.
• Evaluation of tools to support these; liaison with vendors to introduce
tool modifications.
• Co-ordination with Alcatel project managers to organise courses, work
groups and pilot projects for detailed evaluation in various European
locations; close monitoring and analysis of pilot project results.
• Generation of all documentation to support ACASE-D.
Technical: The following methods and tools were evaluated: Object Oriented
Design, JSD/JSP, H - OOD, CORE, Jordan, Information Engineering, Merise,
SSADM; Verilog SDL, editor, real-time simulator, C code generator. Also
Interleaf, Pagemaker and Framemaker documentation tools. All software
was evaluated on networked SunOS/workshops or Apollo.