Five Essential Capabilities Enabled by Transformation Programme Assurance
Does your business have the essential capabilities to deliver a large‑scale technology transformation? This is the critical question you must answer both now and throughout your programme to ensure you are successful. In this blog we will explore what the 5 essential capabilities are and explain how transformation programme assurance provides the governance needed to manage them effectively.
1) Visibility & Transparency in Transformation Programme Assurance
Do you find yourself or your team asking questions like:
“Do we really have the experience needed to deliver this project?”
“Are we sure we are on top of all the risks and issues?”
Or even…
“where are we with…?”
…only to get a “let me check and get back to you”.
Visibility and transparency can be tricky. Your team are working on the programme around their day jobs, sharing the good news and optimism as any passionate team would (especially with reputations on the line…) but from your bird’s eye view you don’t have a clear line of site. A sense of “what am I not hearing?” is creeping in around your daily discussions.
How Transformation Programme Assurance supports you:
- With the support of an independent advisor, you get transparency and clear, honest reporting without any optimism bias
- Risks and issues are surfaced early before they cause critical damage
- You receive a unified ‘single view of the truth’ across teams and vendors that would struggle to pull this view together whilst doing the work themselves
Industry voices on Programme Assurance:
“Nine Feet Tall provided us with a thorough assessment of our portfolio. Their assessment was clear, quick and helped us to determine what was feasible to deliver within our resource and budget constraints.” Liz Hanshaw, Head of Technology Programmes, Central England Co-operative
2) Objectivity in Transformation Programmes
It may be that your team have not led a transformation before, making it fair to ask whether they have blind-spots which, by their nature, they are not aware of. You might also wonder if they’re telling you what they think you want to hear instead of what you really need to know or even making decisions based on internal politics rather than what’s best for the business.
At Nine Feet Tall we’ve seen first hand just how critical it is that executives receive impartial, unbiased information, free from personal feelings and interpretations and supported by industry and transformation expertise.
How Transformation Programme Assurance supports you:
- You will receive evaluation of progress, dependencies, and risks to ensure they are realistic
- Decisions and information will receive fact‑based challenges that leaders can trust
- Plans, readiness, and forecasts will be objectively analysed for their accuracy
- Have a safe space for members of your team to share concerns without a risk of “rocking the boat”
- You will receive feedback provided to help you improve based off extensive digital transformation experience
Industry voices on Programme Assurance:
“[9FT] gained instant trust from key stakeholders and felt they could be open and honest. 9FT were amenable, friendly and a pleasure to work with.” NSPCC PMO Team
3) Complexity Risk Mitigation
Transformation programmes are often described as “big projects”, but this is a worrying underestimate of the complexity that will be faced during the enterprise-wide change. A transformation project is not just implementing new technologies but rewriting how the business works. It will impact strategy, technology, people and processes and needs to consider customer expectations, regulation, data and security.
That’s a lot to have oversite of. Here are a few questions that can be asked to assess if you are on top of your transformation programme’s complexity:
- How will I get buy-in from my people to support the change?
- Which processes change because of this new technology and how will they be updated as a result?
- How will project documentation be collected for auditing?
- What is the impact to your customers?
- Are security and data being built into the backbone of the programme?
- Do we know the priority order of actions to avoid additional cost and complexity?
And much more.
You may have assigned a capable project management function and seasoned SMEs to your team but if they are new to transformation this will be a complex programme to manage. It is therefore important to use Transformation Programme Assurance to support your people to accomplish their goals and deliver your business strategy.
How Transformation Programme Assurance supports you:
- The Programme Assurance is provided by SMEs with in-depth knowledge of the complexity of programmes and an understanding of what a good transformation programme looks like.
- Programme assurance allows someone to step back and assess systems‑wide dependencies, integrations, and design
- Provide early identification of structural risks before they become critical
- Advice on how to reduce complexity and improve prioritisation of work
Industry voices on Programme Assurance:
“The Nine Feet Tall Consultants have a great style and engage positively, sensitively challenging, demanding clarity whilst pushing forward transformation. Should the opportunity arise for Nine Feet Tall to get involved again, I wouldn’t hesitate.” Jeremy Bailes, Portfolio & Change Management Director, Diageo
4) Programme Governance & Accountability
A warning sign that governance and accountability is lacking in your programme is when you hear statements like “I am not sure who is responsible for that…” or “we still haven’t made a decision on that”. You may even notice silos forming between groups.
Issues like these naturally form if a suitable strategy isn’t put in place to govern the activities across the transformation programme and hold people accountable. Even if individuals mean well, with a busy day job and transformation being a complex process, it is easy for them to forget to align with another part of the programme or to let a task slip to prioritise part of their role unaware of the critical impact to the programme.
How Transformation Programme Assurance supports you:
- During assurance you will be assessed for clarity of programme roles, decisions, and ownership and provide methods to improve.
- Strengthen strategies to obtain buy-in from your team
- Improve steering and escalation routes to ensure the right people are making the right decisions at the right time.
- Assurance that governance is suitable for the programme’s needs, not too much nor too little.
Industry voices on Programme Assurance:
“You have managed to get exec engagement, buy in and commitment to the vision for our critical change programme… Thanks again to you all for your engagement and support with what was very short notice…” Wayne Neely, Head of Portfolio Management, WithersWorldWise
5) Transformation Programme Assurance Through Vendor Control
All transformations start with selecting a vendor, a process Nine Feet Tall can support through our Tech Select offering. During this selection you will of course choose a reputable, professional vendor but it is not unfair to say that many vendors, even reputable ones, wish to be “sticky” with your business. With your business wishing to remain flexible and their business wishing to be with you for the long haul you may find yourself questioning which decisions are the right ones. You may say: “Are we too dependent on the vendor?”, “Is the timeline and cost for implementation suggested by the vendor accurate?” and “They keep assuring me it’s fine… but is it really?”.
How Transformation Programme Assurance supports you:
- Independent vendor scrutiny is conducted without the influence of commercial relationships
- Industry expertise allows for validation of vendor claims, plans, and progress
- The independent positioning of programme assurance allows for the challenge of scope, timelines, and resourcing
- Commercial protection so the organisation isn’t over‑promised or under‑delivered
Industry voices on Programme Assurance:
“[During the programme, 9FT] Demonstrated how having an Implementation Partner adds value [to the] client organisation by representing their needs and challenging the supplier, and [adds value] to the supplier by coordinating client team deliverables and requirements.” Key Stakeholder, Danone
Transformation Programme Assurance Key Takeaways
As a consulting firm offering technology transformation services, we know the key to the success of your large-scale technology transformation lies in visibility, objectivity and governance. With your teams being busy with their day jobs, new to technology transformation or imbued with the politics and agendas of their team, these criteria can be no mean feat to setup. This is why third-party transformation programme assurance is critical to support your company’s transformation.
Programme assurance brings a single, reliable view of delivery health providing clear reporting, early risk identification, and the factual grounding you and your team need to steer the programme with confidence.
What if long-term third-party programme assurance isn’t suitable for me currently? The sections in this blog will give you a strong starting point for building those same essential criteria into your own programme, so you can still be set up for success. You can also explore our short health check engagements as a one-off to get you on the right track.
Our objective is to accelerate and safeguard your transformation. If you would like to learn more about how we support technology and transformation simply get in touch.
