The supplier had signed up to a major new outsourcing deal where transition/transformation needed to be completed within 18 months with migration taking place over one “big-bang” weekend. The impact of getting this wrong would have been disastrous to the reputation of all parties.

The supplier had undertaken a 3 month exercise to plan out the transition/transformation. They had worked from the end date backwards to fit in all the necessary activities. They were 3 months from the migration weekend and the parties were in total disagreement about the status of the programme. De-RISK were introduced to do an independent assessment of the risk to the timescales. A QBC Timescale risk assessment was done (which took 2 days) and this predicted that the programme only had a 5% chance of success and would probably overrun by 6 months.

The 5% confidence meant that the situation was recoverable but only by being very aggressive on the risks. All parties undertook to participating in a joint de-risking exercise using ABCD. After a month the confidence of success had increased to 60% and the relentless focus meant that the risks were totally under control by the migration weekend. The migration weekend ultimately went smoothly and the service transitioned to full operations smoothly and without any significant issues.

“The best example of government programme risk management that I have seen”
Government Dept Minister