North America, EMEA, and APAC

2022

The client, a large bank, needed to implement a critical technology transformation of key applications to a fixed deadline. Significant levels of technical debt had built up within the organization over an extended period of time.

The client did not have the internal processes or skills to address the tactical remediation of these applications which were running partially or completely on technologies that were end of life or end of service. This created compliance and security issues for the client.

Key applications needed to be brought up to compliant levels in order to meet time bound commitments. This deadline meant that PTS expertise was needed to provide robust solutions to complex problems while ensuring rigour around governance of the program to allow for predictable and reliable outcomes at scale and pace.

Additional challenges were presented by the complexity of the environments, multiple operating systems, highly customized configurations, and the requirement to work with multiple 3^rd party vendors and highly siloed technology teams. In addition, remediation was to be executed across the full technology stack.

To remediate over a 100 applications to a deadline an application remediation factory was established to ensure predictable and reliable outcomes.

A number of varying technical disciplines were needed as part of the PTS Program team to complete the services including Governance, Technical Project Management and Technical SMEs in several different technologies.

Further, a factory process was developed to meet the remediation effort in scale and pace which was broken down in to 4 key phases each of which had multiple steps within. After each stage a quality gate control process would ensure that all the necessary steps were taken as dictated by the factory process and also any mandated artefacts were produced, all to the quality standards agreed. Each phase also sought approval from the application teams to ensure a common agreement on the phase completion.

Discovery

Specialist project managers and their technical support teams catalogued the current state of each application from multiple data sources, engaged with the application teams and created initial RAID logs. The program worked with the client to collect and cleanse all the required data to ensure no elements requiring transformation were missed. The output of the discovery process was a detailed application profile and scope document and remediation baseline.

Planning

Once the scope was understood detailed remediation project plans were created whilst close engagement with the application teams was maintained at all times. Migration strategies were formulated and documented. The supporting hardware build documentation was created. All plans were signed off by key stakeholders to ensure all parties were in agreement on the approach being taken.

Execution

The execution contained multiple phases depending on the number of environments for the application. Servers were built and validated through our quality control procedures before being deployed for use for the relevant environment (DEV, TEST, PROD). App owner approval was sought before deployment to ensure assets were fit for purpose. Prior to deployment detailed “day-of-migration” plans were created and the relevant change control standards for the current environment were prepared.

On the day of deployment, a “command-and-control” team managed the execution of the “day-of-migration” plan, tracking progress, managing resources, escalating issues when required and reporting key milestones of the activity through to completion.

Transition

Once full deployment to the production environments was achieved a project closure document was generated and final quality controls implemented to ensure all agreed success criteria had been achieved and consensus on completion was reached. Relevant data repositories were updated, old equipment decommissioned and knowledge transfer to the business-as-usual teams carried out.

• Business critical applications updated to current levels of technology ensuring
  • Reduced operational risk
  • Current support levels from suppliers, leading to a reduction in costs by removing expensive extended support agreements
• Technical debt significantly reduced in the environment
• Data repositories cleansed through both the discovery process and post project quality controls
• Remediation factory process embedded within client
• Governance best practice introduced to the client
• Highly skilled project delivery team able to complete required remediations in aggressive timeframes that would not be possible using in-house staff therefore meeting committed deadlines
• Existing processes and procedures updated and refined to meet current standards