The management of technical obsolescence risk is a challenging area for IT departments across various industries. Often underfunded and not prioritised, it can be difficult to communicate the criticality of technical debt remediation and the business risk that obsolescence carries.
Our client, a multinational insurance and asset management firm understood the potential impact of technical debt and turned to Wavestone for support.
Improving visibility and understanding risk
In 2022, Wavestone was engaged to develop an MI reporting capability to support the client’s ongoing obsolescence risk agenda, providing visibility on their IT estate and helping to manage operational risk. Wavestone was chosen due to its strong track record supporting large financial services firms with their technical obsolescence risk strategies.
Our Approach
At the heart of any report, model, or dashboard is the data, which was the focus of this project. Wavestone’s four-stage approach allowed our client to truly have a say in the development of the product.
- Gathered, defined, and agreed a set of visualisation requirements for the MI dashboard that supported the client’s technical debt strategy and enabled IT stakeholders to leverage data as they communicate with management.
- Created a model that simplified the source data and could be refreshed easily.
- Built MI views in an iterative, agile approach to maximise client feedback.
- Trained and handed over the dashboard to the BAU team through a series of workshops and training sessions, ensuring the successful deployment of the dashboard with minimal disruption to BAU activities.
The result: A robust reporting capability delivered in the Positive Way
Wavestone’s collaborative and iterative approach enabled the team to deliver a tailored dashboard that addressed specific needs and was simple to embed into the business-as-usual operations.
The dashboard continuously enables the client to prioritise remediation efforts across its global IT infrastructure estate with a detailed view on obsolescence risk and potential impact to the business. Additionally, the dashboard empowers the client’s IT stakeholders to communicate with end users more clearly about the impact and benefits of these projects.
Robin Lee
Senior Consultant
Adopting a data-driven approach to managing obsolescence can yield wider benefits for clients – for example increased awareness of the availability, quality, and coverage of their data. This helps lay the foundation for organisations to shift from reactive and subjective decision making, to proactive and quantitative management of the IT estate.
