Project information
- Category: Programme Management
- Client:A Market leader in mid-range accountancy systems
Project Details
Challenge
This company was the UK market leader in the sale of mid-range accounting systems. It is a $100M turnover company employing some 900 staff. The development arm of the company was failing and had not delivered a new release in the last two years. The company appointed Nick as CIO of the Research and Development division to aggressively change the processes and culture and to deliver the modern product that the company needed to survive. In this position Nick was responsible for all software development, and had some 220 staff reporting directly to him. This was a mixed technology environment with major development teams in both Java and Cobol. He had budget responsibility for £9.5M.
Delivery
In the 18 months that Nick was at the company, Nick:
- Completely restructured the development organisation to provide a fast track, OO based development capability
- Moved the company’s technical strategy to support E-Business
- Delivered two major product releases. This involved enhancing 63% of all the current product software, and delivering an entirely new product offering, (approximately 150,000 lines of code).
Outcome
Delivered the ‘E-Business Gateway’, which gave the company a leading edge capability in the E-Commerce marketplace. Recovered the ‘Version 5’ programme, a £5M technology step change for the company and one that was running approximately 15 months late. The revised plan met all of its milestones, and delivered to market on time and on budget