INDIVIDUAL WORK

Individual Work

Individual Work

Case

On 15 January 2010, a German bank, Schwarzböse, will complete the acquisition of a UK financial services provider, Klesvask, that offers pensions, insurance and investments. Klesvask has 300 staff in 5 sites and uses 15 different software applications, 8 of which are COTS applications supported by the vendors and the others were developed and are maintained in-house. All the applications share a common customer index with a registry of which systems contain records about the given customer. Schwarzböse plans to migrate 10 of Klesvask's systems (5 of the in-house and 5 of the COTS) to its standard corporate systems. The other Klesvask systems need to be maintained. The Schwarzböse systems all interoperate using an integration engine, defined XML transactions and a standard data dictionary and reference code tables. Schwarzböse also wants to get its corporate timesheet recording system in use by all the fomer Klesvask staff by June 2010. The aim is to complete the system migrations within 12 months. Schwarzböse expects to be able to reduce its UK external IT support costs by 30%, decrease overall headcount by 15% and cut the inhouse software development team from 15 staff to 4 when the migrations are completed. The financial services market continues to be volatile and the European and UK regulators are expected to seek assurances about the quality controls of the takeover plans. As part of its QMS, Schwarzböse has adapted PRINCE2 as its project management standard and ITIL as its service management standard. This information comprises the project brief. The project is now in its initiation stage.

PRINCE2 (Projects in Controlled Environments) is a structured method for effective project management. It is a facto standard used extensively by the U.K Government and is widely recognised and used in the private sector, both in the U.K and internationally. PRINCE2, the method, is in the public domain, offering non-proprietarily best- practice guidance on project management.

Prince2 was established in 1989 by CCTA (the central computer and Telecommunications Agency), since renamed the OGC (the office of Government Commerce) the method was originally based on PROMPT, a project management method created by Impact system Ltd in 1975. PROMPT was adopted by CCTA in 1979 as the standard to be used for all Government information system projects. When prince2 was launch in 1989, it effectively superseded PROMPT within Government projects. PRINC2 was designed and developed by a group of project management specialists under contract to OGC and over 150 public and private sector organisations were involved in reviewing the quality of the method as it was produced. Prince2 remains in the public domain and copyright is retained by the crown .PRINCE with the latest version PRINCE2 released in 1996 is a registered trademark of OGC.

Projects failures are all too common, some make the headlines, and the vast majority are quickly forgotten. In the U.K and indeed in other parts of the world, projects are always undertaken to meet needs of society and the countries involved as a whole notwithstanding the necessity of ...