• Jan Hameed, Director |
  • Ifzal Ahmed, Senior Manager |
  • James O’Callaghan, Partner |
3 min read

The path to success is not without its challenges

Change is constant in today’s competitive market. Business leaders are facing challenges and obstacles responding to continuous advances in technology and increasingly high customer expectations for personalised digital products. Organisations that have business agility can react quickly to these challenges by adopting agile values and principles when delivering an enterprise-wide transformation programme. When done right, agile delivery has the potential to offer increased visibility, better alignment, faster time to market, improved product or service, higher value realisation, greater team collaboration, and increased customer satisfaction.

Challenges in agile transformation

While agile delivery has the potential to add value to any transformation programme, it is not without challenge and risk. The challenges range from a lack of experience in agile delivery, entrenched processes, unclear governance structure, inadequate tooling through to challenges from existing culture and mindset whilst delivering the transformation programme. This can introduce significant risk to any agile transformation, which include budget overrun, scope changes and changing deliverables, and less predictability with the delivery of the outcome.

Getting to a predictable outcome

As businesses embark on agile transformation programmes, the need for effective evaluation and optimisation becomes paramount. An Independent Programme Assessment (IPA) of the transformation programme can help to identify bottlenecks, manage the risk and uncertainty, and improve delivery confidence. An IPA provides an opportunity for an early intervention, helping to steer major transformation programmes in the right direction.

  • Set-up for Success Review: Undertaken to assess if the programme is on the right track during the initiation and mobilisation phase.

  • Stage Gate Review: Undertaken when a programme lead up to formal checkpoints and seeks approval to proceed to the next stage

  • Go-live / Business Readiness Review: Undertaken to assess programme readiness to implement solution and readiness of business capability

  • Post Implementation Review: Undertaken to evaluate how effectively the programme was run, whether the objectives have been met and ensure benefits are realised

Once a baseline is established with an IPA, a Continuous Programme Assessment (CPA) helps to provide a critical review of the programme throughout the delivery lifecycle to ensure that it is on the right track to deliver the desired outcomes and realise value. Assessment of an agile delivery programme is done using a collaborative approach and proven accelerators.

  • KPMG will work jointly with clients to provide insight, guidance and potential mitigations and solutions to key challenges identified to help the programme move forward.

  • KPMG have a proven and effective approach to reviewing programmes leveraging the Global Enterprise Transformation Tool (GETT) to drive pace and confidence, and help avoid the pitfalls that others have made before.

Market leading credentials and experience

KPMG has market leading expertise in programme assessment and a depth of expertise across the industry that provide an informative perspective on transformation issues faced by organisations.

  • Review expertise: KPMG is recognised as a market leader for reviewing large-scale transformation programmes – our credentials attest to the quality of our work, deep expertise and flexible approach.

  • Sector knowledge: KPMG pair this functional expertise with deep sector knowledge across industries, including: financial services, energy, government, manufacturing and technology.

KPMG – a trusted partner

The true value of Independent Programme Assessment (IPA) lies in its ability to drive positive change. Building trust is crucial to driving positive change and delivering value from agile transformation. In the dynamic business environment, where adaptability and responsiveness are paramount, having an objective evaluation of your transformation programme helps you to stay on course toward achieving their strategic objectives. An IPA can help an organisation to navigate the complexities of agile transformation with confidence, fostering a culture of trust, continuous improvement and innovation.