Our recipe for successful regulatory projects in 2024
We summarise our five favourites tips to nail your regulatory projects in 2024
1. The power of a strong project manager
A project manager plays the crucial role of a conductor ensuring fluidity, coordination and visibility. By having an all-encompassing view of the tasks to come and challenges to face, they are able to allocate resources, communicate effectively and escalate issues with sponsors to meet project goals. They take a structured approach which encourages collaboration, transparency, and accountability to make the successful delivery the objective of each participant on the project.
It may seem simple on paper, but don’t underestimate the level of energy required to unite and engage different teams around a common goal while acknowledging that they all have their own agenda, potentially conflicting views and priorities!
Keeping things moving in the long run is a difficult exercise and we saw the consequences on a large SFDR project last year, which became dangerously delayed. The main reason was that there were expectations that each team would produce deliverables without needing the support of a project manager… it didn’t work! Our team put the project back on track by having a project manager structuring the approach, making sure every team felt bought in, accountable and re-creating the delivery momentum. Ultimately the rescuing action cost more to the company in time and money than having a dedicated central project manager from the beginning.
2. Communication is key
Communication is an essential, often neglected, part of large regulatory projects. To bring people on a journey and ensure a good engagement, the communication plan must allocate space and time for regular updates. This is not only to provide information to the impacted teams, but also collect their feedback and concerns and to ensure their commitment. Regular (brief) updates within existing forums (Town Hall, Newsletters, Quarterly update…etc.) addressed to the whole company, are also effective ways to add visibility, and reinforce the collective drive towards implementation.
3. Getting the right project sponsor
When a programme impacts different processes and business areas, conflicts occur and risk bringing projects to standstill. Clear and efficient escalation mechanisms are critical to allow swift decisions to support progress. To achieve this, a strong sponsor needs to be identified. Ideally this would be a member of the management team with sufficient seniority, business knowledge and gravitas to help drive decision-making impacting different areas of the business. Remember, unpopular decisions are better than no decisions because they push the delivery team into action. We also saw how much more cost effective it is to take and apply decisions quickly, even if they have to be adjusted later on than pondering onto them for long as it keeps the focus on delivery. We saw this on a number of MiFID2 projects where there was not a dedicated sponsor but multiple head of departments struggling to take common decisions.
4. Scope, scope, scope
The scoping phase is critical to ensure common understanding on the impact of the regulation across the business, from individual roles and responsibilities, team-level impacts to wider impacts on customers. However, it is also essential to ensure the project remains focussed on delivering the agreed scope and keeping the project on track, to avoid overspending. By clarifying project scope and deliverables at the outset of the project (and ensuring these are documented in the appropriate project artifacts), you can start mobilising the whole company behind a common goal.
5. Documentation
Documentation is often seen as a tedious part of the project delivery process and is often pushed back to the end of the project. However, documentation including gap analysis, delivery road map, requirements, development, testing and implementation methodology, reflect on the project approach and logic, support any decisions taken and justify the approach to the regulator. Well organised and up to date documentation is particularly useful to facilitate knowledge transfer, hand-over, communication and ultimately ensure project continuity.
Conclusion:
Delivering a project successfully is like hosting Christmas at home, meticulous planning, coordination of numerous helping hands, shared excitement and enthusiasm, clear instructions, occasional chaos, few unexpected twists, constant adaptability and a (project or culinary) chef are the key ingredients to support a complex process with a satisfying outcome for all participants!
At Avyse, we are project experts all year round, not just for Christmas, so if you want help setting up a project or helping a wayward project get back on track, get in touch with Magali.
