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Enterprise Programme Governance And the Judgement to Call Time on a Failing Platform
Headline result
Halted an unstable recruitment platform before go-live
The challenge
An international bank needed a new recruitment platform for a 110,000-strong workforce, and recruitment of up to 700 staff per month in high-volume roles. Scale brought its own risk: a technology programme that looked sound on paper could still fail in practice if nobody was prepared to say so before go-live.
My approach
I programme-managed the plan for the bank's new enterprise recruitment platform, providing governance across its workforce. When it became clear during the latter stages of planning that the underlying platform was unstable, I recommended halting the programme rather than pushing a shaky system live – a call the business accepted.
The impact
The eRecruitment product and process design were delivered successfully in their own right – it was the specific technology platform originally selected that proved unstable on the bank's systems. Because the judgement call to halt the programme was made and acted on before go-live, it never went live in an unstable state. Programme governance and the willingness to say "not yet" proved as valuable to the business as delivery itself.