1. Successful Program Management enables Business Transformation
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How successful Programme Management
can enable
Business Transformation.
PMI National Conference 2013 Paper Publication
Ramesh Ganiga
Consultant, Insurance Service Unit
Tata Consultancy Services Ltd

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ramesh.ganiga@tcs.com
Abstract
Any transformation journey to achieve its goal with flying colors impacts business costs and is dependent
on its risk appetite, speed to market and overall approach for delivery. In this competitive environment,
today’s leaders are pressurized to cut costs, tighten controls, improve performance and capture large
market share while tackling the challenges head-on and introducing more innovative thoughts to achieve
outstanding results in its march to stay ahead in the race.
How successful programme management can enable effective business transformation and achieve
business outcome within budgetary constraints depends on the application of key drivers such as “work
as one team (Supplier & Customer) with partnership approach in all relationship level initiatives along with
seamless collaboration and effective communication”. The application of these key drivers are
incorporated through the concept of “Staying Relevant” and structured implementation model of
“Partnership Approach” to leverage maximum benefits.
This approach has been adopted to successfully deliver one of the key strategic large programmes,
wherein the current scenarios were using external driving factors like regulatory opportunity to:
capture more than 50% of market share
enhance capacity of legacy applications to cope with projected new business volume
realize more than GBP 700K benefits in IT and operational efficiency and
achieve 200% increase in APE post implementation
This was a big stepping stone for the business transformation journey across the board at enterprise
level.
Introduction
In any industry today, most delivery approaches are trying to incorporate intensive processes, hoping to
maximize benefits. In doing so, they fail to concentrate on basic principles such as working together as a
team, building relationship with Customer and trying to improve the collaboration within/outside the team
to address the current and emerging business needs. Tailoring the delivery approach by applying
standardization, Customer centric approach and with appropriate amount of innovation, is necessary to
make dramatic improvements in the ability to execute and deliver the results.
The “Partnership Approach” is one of the best suited approaches to demonstrate such improvements.
This is highly collaborative, disciplined and has a quality focused approach to achieve the desired
outcomes - potentially producing the outcome by suitable concept called “Staying Relevant” and
structured implementation model of “Partnership Approach”. Also this approach goes along with the
concept of Fusion Process Theory – Organizations are finding that this leads to increased confidence,
higher success rates/quality, greater levels of stakeholder satisfaction, better return on investment (ROI),
and reduced time to market for the deliveries.

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Also bringing certainty in difficult times is atmost important factor of Programme Management. The three
cornerstones that determine success or failure are Culture, Leadership and Communication. How
Programme Management would make the difference through Diversity sessions, Building Human Capital
programme and Communication Enhancement training to bridge the gap in Culture, Leadership and
Communication respectively within Customer and Supplier environment and to achieve the ultimate goal
ONE TEAM and Partnership Approach.
The goal of this paper is to share experiences in our application of this delivery approach to one of the
strategic large programmes, enabling us to deliver the desired outcome through realization of synergies
within the teams involved.
Approach
For any organization, Business transformation journey is a phased approach. This unique approach is a
combination of adopting ‘Basic Principles’ and using available ‘Enabling Services’ in order to get the
‘Optimal Results’ such as “Partnership Approach” at all relationship level initiatives. A typical adoption
approach is depicted in figure 1.
Basic Principles
Enabling Services
Optimal Results
Execution
Orientation
Together
Norming
Everyone
Achieves
More
Effective
Communication
Seamless
Collaboration
Partnership Approach

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Figure 1: Approach
(O)rientation: The concept of Orientation emphasizes on providing first step guidance and direction
to achieve goal. Orientation will play a key role in alignment of individual potential to team objectives
and therefore promote “ONE TEAM” a single team behaviour. The programme should inculcate
positive appreciation of their respective role and acclimatization to total social, intellectual and moral
project environment. Orientation programmes are the foundation that imbibe the following
components.
o Awareness of Stakeholders of a programme and necessary linkages
o Philosophy of the overall programme
o Resource induction and knowledge generation
(N)orming: Identifying suitable resource, team composition and task assignment to ensure that
everyone involved knows and understands the basic principles through which organizations can
achieve maximum enterprise level outcomes. After sufficient Orientation, the team should move on
to a phase of stronger commitment with much deeper understanding of programmes. This is the first
step in the future high performance stage which will include the stakeholders in sharing, trust building
and creative activities. Though the “actual real work” does not happen here it is essential to set the
context of the work as part of this phase.
(E)xecution: After setting a robust stage in previous activities, setting the right expectations and
building the required skills is an important aspect for “succeeding” with this approach at an enterprise
level. Using proper analogy, illustrations and element of innovation, execution requires a dynamic
decision making. The team will be sufficiently nurtured for such challenges by this stage.
(T)ogether: We always say we work “together” on the programme or project. Every successful
individual knows his or her achievement on a team only by working together. As the saying goes
‘many drops form an ocean’. It is important to have “togetherness in ‘individual efforts’ ”. Both are
symbiotic and non-separable. Communication and collaboration are handy tools to achieve this..
(E)veryone: “ONE TEAM” approach institutionalization is not a goal, it’s a journey. Teams from
Customer and Supplier are built into the group irrespective of the diversities involved. The team
behavior is the backbone of this thought, and team means “EVERYONE”
(A)chieves: Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. So
promoting one team approach and continuous focus to achieve the outcome is extremely important.

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Achievement is the ‘end’ of the goal while team is the ‘means’ to the goal. Marriage between ‘ENDS
and MEANS’ will ensure achievement.
(M)ore: more, more and more. Ensure that everybody, right from the senior management of the
company to the developer knows and understands all about the new methodology and have their
expectations set to achieve and drive through the anticipated benefits beyond the originally defined
targets.
Using the above mentioned ‘Basic Principles’ along with ‘Enabling Services’ such as “effective
communication” and “seamless collaboration” will derive successful “Partnership Approach”. Following
points are the key elements of “Partnership Approach”:
o Building consensus of a common vision, and communicating it
o Structuring and mobilizing the right work streams to deliver outcomes
o Gaining buy-in and commitment of all stakeholders
o Marshalling proper resources to engender a can-do culture
o Aligning people, process and technology challenges
o Ensuring a coordinated and controlled change program
o Driving anticipated benefits post-implementation
o Adopting and implementing innovative ideas and thought leadership
o Promoting partnership approach at all relationship level initiatives
o Following adequate and structured governance framework
Along with above mentioned key elements, cultural orientation, working cross cultural workshops and
understanding Business culture sessions jointly with Customer and Supplier will help to achieve cultural
integration. With respect to Leadership - Building Human Capital workshop will add immense value in
understanding different style of Leadership which needs to be adopted depends on the situation, also
how important emotional intelligence and understanding once personal EQ profile at Leadership level. To
improve the communication, the structured approach of enhancing business communication through
structured communication training and mentor/mentee approach. These initiatives will create good
working environment within all stakeholders to promote “Partnership Approach”.
Staying Relevant
‘Staying Relevant’ to all stakeholders is a contextual framework for effective adoption. This framework is
to understand the big picture and tailored practices to meet the unique challenges faced by a system
delivery team of any size. Figure 2 Staying relevant to all stakeholders represented by single view:

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Figure 2: Staying relevant to all stakeholders represented by single view
The ultimate goal is to create a close-enough option to all stakeholders, the “must know” and “nice to
know” elements of the big picture. This would benefit all parties in understanding the relevance, and add
value to derive maximum benefits. In figure 2, the left hand column highlights the key elements that are
very important for this business outcome:
o Function footprint
o Timelines
o Process
o Applications
o Projects
and subsequent columns with boxes are for illustration purposes only.
Projects
Applications
End user
Provider
Customer
Pr
oc
es
s
Scalabili
ty
1,2,3,4
Function
Footprint
Timelines

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Function footprint – The top most row that illustrates the overall functional life cycle of the product or
business process in relation to the timelines, process, application and projects. This will also reflect
the business domain, the big picture and final business outcome expected. This would help
understand how closely coupled business processes and dependencies are.
Timelines –Timelines are predominantly for the product or business process to evolve. This can also
be used for the programme delivery timelines in case there is a time bound dependency e.g.
regulatory change programme. This focuses on clearly defined business requirements and reflects
activities, under the timescales that need to be carried out.
Process – The process would have quite a few layers based on the business case, business process
& B2B etc. Here in this illustration above, processes are categorized as Customer, Provider and End
User. The end to end business process model and its high-level flow needs to be drawn to keep all
the stakeholders in a single page.
Applications – This will showcase all applications including green field applications and the existing
legacy applications that need to undergo enhancements. This would also reflect the
interdependencies and total percentage of change required and complexities.
Projects – List of projects cut across all the applications, business processes and function footprints
along with the timelines. This would showcase the number of projects involved, the potential risks in
terms of delivery timelines, dependencies and technology. It also helps to bring the synergy with
other elements and projects across the board.
By using the “Staying Relevant” approach, one can ensure all stakeholders are in a common view and in
a single page in terms of scope, delivery and outcome. This would also highlight the key risks and assist
in finding best resolution for issues, concerns and dependencies. Based on the need, the micro level
details can be illustrated in different levels, e.g. Level 1 (figure 2), Level 2 and Level 3 etc.
This can also help in putting in details into Business capability model, project charter, delivery plan, etc. In
this case project team has extensively used above framework for onboarding new joiners, deriving the
detailed plan for development and implementation. This played a major role in training application support
team and handover for warranty and interim support. This also helps in adding a lot of value to the
programme delivery and business process optimization.
The above single page view (figure 2) really added value to customer and supplier with concept of
“Staying Relevant”; each and every stakeholder understood the importance and realized how powerful
tool it was; to present the circumstances in very dynamic and challenging situation in order to achieve
successful delivery.

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This approach also classified based on the Fusion Process Theory - to deliver increased confidence,
higher success rates/quality and greater levels of stakeholder satisfaction.
When the usage of “Staying Relevant” concept in real time, can be made more effective through well-
organized joint Business workshop (Customer + Supplier) to have a walkthrough of single page view
(figure 2) to add value and make the difference. These workshops develop a stronger sense of single
team, opening up the lines of communication and identifying the practical ways of in which we can work
differently in support of improving collaboration. This is also best suited concept to bring certainty in
uncertain times from Programme Management point of view. This will also provide the right platform to
take the debate further and even find right salutation. Overall it is a very well proven concept to become
more open and honest and help identifying number of challenges and best suitable solution to achieve
the ultimate goal specially to bring certainty in uncertain times.
Implementation
This implementation model is relatively straight forward and very effective. This is focused on two key
areas; Business Strategy and Solution. Figure 3 illustrates the entire implementation model in detail.
Figure 3: Implementation Model
Supplier
Development Challenges
&
Solutions
Customer
Business Strategy
&
Proposition
Time
Quality
Cost
Scope

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The two key important aspects that the model evolves around are:
o Customer – Business Strategy and Proposition
o Supplier – Development Challenges and Solutions
The Business Strategy and Proposition is to develop various products and enhance legacy applications to
cope with projected new business and contribution process peaks. The Supplier had to overcome
development challenges and define end to end solution in detail to position IT applications and
infrastructure to sustain increased book size. The above requirements/scope was executed and
implemented through structured implementation model of “Partnership Approach” that consists of:
o Basic Principles
o Enabling Services
o Optimal Results
o Staying Relevant
o Innovation
o Governance
Basic Principles – Ensure that everyone understands the basic principles and promotes one team
approach highlighted in earlier section.
Enabling Services - Effective communication and seamless collaboration become key factors.
Optimal Results – Ensure to get the right results as a Partnership Approach.
Staying Relevant- Understand the big picture and stay focused on relevant content to be
accountable for the team & contribution as appropriate.
Innovation – Continuously innovate, adopt and evolve with customer wants and needs in order to
stay relevant.
Governance – One of the very important elements in delivery model to track and monitor the
progress and take appropriate actions at each level.
Partnership Approach – Along with above key parameters and elements, Cost, Quality, Time and Scope
are influencing factors on the Partnership Approach. This structured implementation model was run
effectively by using supporting structures like, SWAT, Governance team, Innovation, Wider Connect, etc
to leverage best practices. Also adopted “ONE TEAM” behavior throughout the journey of execution and
implementation. Some of the key differentiators to promote ONE TEAM and Partnership Approach are
highlighted below:

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a) The frequent visits from Customers to delivery centers to gain a greater understanding how team can
better exploit any opportunities moving forward and look back at lessons learnt, identifying and
implementing key actions to improve communication and collaboration.
b) Customer visiting the team and being part of key implementations, especially on weekends, make the
team realize how important the Supplier as an extended team to Customers.
Another very important aspect while working with “Partnership Approach” is innovation. While team
enhances the value of team work, it will stand by each other in challenging times and create the
environment that promotes innovation and allows transformation. This emphasizes the idea that
“INNOVATION distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” This structured implementation model
ensured in adopting proper innovations and thought leaderships to leverage maximum benefits
highlighted some of them below:
a) To address the challenge for enhancing legacy applications to handle increased volume of new
business growth and concurrent process efficiency - Team introduced “Business Throughput
Measurement Utility”, an Early Warning System for Application Breakdown that would capture metrics to
predict potential break points in business applications for predicted volumes. This was used to measure
the application performance, identify breakpoints and predict future issues. There was a need to setup a
test environment, setup massive test data with complex business scenarios and run number of iterative
tests. But this was practically not possible due to the complexity of the application landscape, cost and
timelines. Thus the “Business Throughput Measurement Utility” idea evolved, which helped realize more
than GBP 500K benefits in IT delivery.
b) To improve operational efficiencies through a low/no-risk, adaptive and business aligned automation
technique - As part of the overall solution, an online application was already developed; but to handle a
small number of requests manually. The operations team needed to perform certain steps manually. This
meant a huge amount of manual work for the Business operations team. To address this challenge
effectively based on the business users requirements and considering other parameters, team had come
up with an innovative solution. The solution was a wrapper by making use of the existing functionality in
the ‘Online Application’. This resulted in significant cost reduction in the build. This also helped realize
more than GBP 200K benefits in operational efficiency.
Key Learnings
Based on the successful implementation of the approach and adoption model, here are the key learnings
from this Programme delivery:
Improve Customer Supplier relationship - Do not let go the existing traditional methodology best
practices merely to adopt this. Blend best practices with these principles

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Take Small Steps - Adopt partnership approach on one or more medium-risk pilot project(s) to
gain both organizational experience and to build trust with Customer.
Top-down Approach - Partnership approach is an organization cultural change. Thus any such
adoptions should have senior management commitment and support and should be accepted first
by the senior management and then only should be made effective
Knowledge Management - Ensure that all stakeholders are aware of the change through training
sessions, and understand their roles and benefits.
Align to organization and business goals - Determine the return on investment and align the
adoption benefits to business and organization goals
Organization Characteristics – Organizations culture may have adverse impact, so carefully
review the implications before adopting
Risk and value driven model – Reap better results through shared risk and value driven model
Sponsor commitment - Gain clear direction and commitment from the right management levels
and Sponsor
Delivery Plan - Clarify objectives, supported by a comprehensive plan for delivery
Implementation - A clear decision-making process to deal with conflicting priorities
Enhanced Trust – A better working and personal relationship, facilitated effective decision making
throughout the programme
Summary and Conclusion
The “Partnership Approach” is neither a rocket science nor a fairy tale magic stick to bring improvements
on its own. Any partnership approach adoption process needs senior management commitment and
direction. It can be done in phased approach by ensuring the organization and projects best practices are
continuously adopted and evolved. This approach has resulted in increased confidence, higher success
rates/quality, greater levels of stakeholder satisfaction, better return on investment (ROI), and reduced
time to market for the deliveries. This structured approach was adopted and implemented successfully in
one of the big scale programmes and achieved following benefits directly:
o captured more than 50% of market share
o enhanced capacity of legacy applications to cope with projected new business volume
o realized more than GBP 700K benefits in IT and operational efficiency and
o achieved 200% increase in APE post implementation
Also managed to come up with a robust, well-defined project management methodology for the
Transformation Programmes and build synergies across the business units, which ensured proper control
over scope, time, cost, quality, risks and contractual arrangements to maximize the benefits across the
board.
This approach is highly proven, beneficial and one of the strongly recommended secrets to success in
programme management, to enable the Business Transformation and to bring certainty in uncertain

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times. Also in Customer and Supplier environment to continue with next level initiatives and bring in
change “Partnering for Growth” will take right momentum through this well-defined “Partnership
Approach”.
Glossary
APE – Annual Premium Equivalent
SWAT – Swift Action Team
B2B – Business to Business
EQ – Emotional Quotient

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About the Author
Ramesh Ganiga
Consultant, Insurance Service Unit
Tata Consultancy Services Ltd
Ramesh Ganiga has more than 15 years of IT experience and is Certified PRINCE2 Practitioner and has Financial
Planning Certificate (FPC) from Charted Insurance Institute (CII) UK and ISEB Certification. Currently the Delivery
Manager for one of the leading Insurance Relationships.
He has specialist skills in Programme and Portfolio Management. Also experienced Consultant in Test Management
for the large programmes like Data Center Migration.
Education qualifications is BE, he is passionate about people management and Champion for the Corporate Social
Responsibility within the account. Interesting fact is that he is trained ‘Yakshgana’ specialist who has performed at
various cultural events.