Project Management and Governance
The Client
GBG are global specialists in identity data intelligence. The company, established in 1989, have offices in 18 locations worldwide and more than 1,000 employees globally. They help their clients confirm that people are who they say they are online and thus make the right decisions about their customers and employees. GBG combines billions of data records from all over the world and uses their proprietary software to help establish trust between businesses and their customers, placing them at the heart of the global digital economy.
GBG are also specialists in fraud and location intelligence. The company helps its clients to verify their own customers in an instant and with confidence, all the while fighting fraud and remaining compliant. To highlight the scale of GBG operations, take note of these statistics:
- Identity Verification. The ability to verify over 4.4Bn people across 72 countries – 60% of the world population
- Fraud and Compliance. Country agnostic fraud and compliance solutions, active implementation in over 30 countries globally
- Location Intelligence. 240 countries and territories with address validation capabilities
- Data network. 510+ datasets with more than 270 data partners
The Problem
GBG boasts a vast range of products and solutions across its business units and locations, and as always, a new project was on the horizon. The internal project management team were already over-committed on existing initiatives and were now faced with a challenge at a different scale, a programme affecting multiple business units, making accurate and timely reporting to stakeholders a challenge.
Recognising that this project was different and critical, the company had to tackle the challenge of keeping synergy between several divisions with consistent engagement and accurate information output. A project leader was required to sit between internal stakeholders and the delivery teams, ensuring the project phases were adequately prioritised and resourced within GBG. The executive team within GBG knew what outcomes they wanted from the project, but getting there, they needed someone to bridge the gap. Working with Gradient, GBG decided to implement a higher level of governance to the management of the project by providing robust oversight of the project at the business and executive level.
The Solution
To help facilitate and develop the right culture for the project, GBG chose to hire Gradient for the objectivity and expertise we could contribute. Project Manager, Pete Doyle, who has been part of the team at Gradient for over 13 years, was assigned to the project. Pete is PRINCE2 qualified and in his career has spent much time managing large professional services and software development teams. Pete is a Microsoft Certified Trainer and has also acted as a Programme and Project Manager for a variety of well-known clients in Manufacturing and the Professional Services industry.
In order to meet stakeholder and market expectations, the additional challenge at GBG was to move away from waterfall development to a fully agile approach across a disparate number of project teams.
What the Client Says
“We gained new ideas on managing and reporting on projects due to Pete’s involvement. His technical expertise meant he could contribute to the project outside of the initial scope of governance which added to the quality of the team overall”.
Actions
- Establish a project timetable with the Head of Architecture to meet delivery priorities dictated by the Head of Product
- Regular communication was imperative throughout. Information and statistics were visual and brief which made it easy for anyone in the team to digest project updates, tasks, responsibilities, expectations and feedback
- We monitored the project against the agreed timescales and gave early escalation of blockers or delays
- Actively collected, assessed, monitored, mitigated and escalated risks
- We ensured all actions and issues were recorded, assigned and progressed where appropriate with the right people
- We coached the teams and individuals to use a consistent framework for delivering the project
- Gradient co-ordinated the picture for the overall achievement of project objectives ensuring all parties remained motivated to task during the project
- Pete chaired weekly delivery team and stakeholder calls where he presented latest progress reports, enabling the team to keep on track for delivery, escalate any issues and discuss what was already delivered
- Pete was also asked to kick start the governance of several other projects in order to introduce more transparent reporting of progress, building on the success of this first initiative.