Accelerating business change and readiness in a portfolio

The client and what they needed

The Defence portfolio provides the technology for people working in Defence to perform their jobs safely and securely. Covering Official and Secret domains, it provides more than 200,000 users with a wide range of platforms, devices, tools, and support. The highly complex portfolio is delivering multiple concurrent projects across MOD’s 12 top-level budget holders (TLBs).

Because the portfolio provides a broad range of services across the MOD estate, all of its projects necessarily involve delivering business change. Although the HLB has a mature and detailed business change management approach, for each of the portfolio’s individual projects to follow this approach independently of one another would be place a very high burden of engagement on both stakeholders and the project teams themselves.

Capabilities we delivered

Business readiness and business change management Stakeholder management, analysis, and engagement Project, programme, and portfolio management Training and knowledge transfer Defence experience and expertise, especially across TLBs

The solution

Hand and Millar (H&M) embedded themselves in the portfolio team to create a community of practice for business change management and business readiness across all of the projects. Together with the projects, H&M devised and agreed a single tailored version of the HLB’s central business change approach that all of the projects follow.

H&M also instituted regular senior stakeholder engagement meetings in which all of the portfolio’s projects participate. This consolidation of stakeholder activity supports a more efficient delivery of business change for all of the projects, and it provides a standing venue and line of communication for when business readiness risks arise. H&M has been able to foresee issues that could delay or block project delivery progress and make use of its long-standing relationships with TLB stakeholders to avert them or agree compromise paths.

In tailoring the change and business readiness processes, and through the delivery of business change outcomes, H&M has also been instrumental in embedding the practice of business readiness into the portfolio. The sizeable volume of activity taking place in the portfolio means that new business change and business readiness professionals are always being onboarded, and this portfolio-wide alignment means these individuals can hit the ground running in their projects.

The benefits

By aligning business change and business readiness practice across the portfolio, H&M has:

reduced the amount of time and effort required of stakeholders to participate in engagement activity
reduced time and effort spent on duplication of work between projects
accelerated the delivery of business change and business readiness for the portfolio’s projects
increased the likelihood of successful adoption of the new or improved services by satisfied users
de-risked delivery through skilful use of H&M’s experience, knowledge, and existing stakeholder relationships.

Hand & Millar’s knowledge of all areas was impressive and led to them being a key resource across the programme. They have been influential in helping me understand the client needs and expectations of the RAIDO Role.

MichaelRisk Manager

Hand & Millar are a “critical friend” whom I can always trust to provide clear and positive suggestions. Thank you for all the support you have provided over the time you have worked with us.

NikkiAsst Hd, Portfolio Team