Summary
The consulting practice at Cedar covers all aspects of a financial services firm’s business model. It assists clients in an integrated fashion – from formulation to execution. Cedar has a long and successful track record of program managing both business and technology transformation engagements, including complex IT integrations involving mergers of leading international banks. Cedar has worked extensively on both the innovative AGILE and the time-tested waterfall methods.
Cedar understands that good program management delivers:
- Early realisation of benefits.
- Institutionalised framework.
- Engaged organization.
For engagements that do not require a full time Agile PMO function, Cedar also offers a PMO Lite model, that allows for a governance approach that is lite-touch, providing a strategic review of the program progress on a periodic basis, and highlighting key issues and their mitigation linked to all key milestones of the program.
Cedar team members are certified PMP and AGILE scrum masters and use the proprietary C-SCORE framework to successfully assist in running the PMO function. Cedar’s governance framework is well tested, with defined roles, terms of reference and reporting lines.
With hundreds of consulting projects executed globally over the years, across industry sectors, Cedar’s experienced team is known for execution excellence and will successfully make strategy & innovation work for you and your organization.
How we add value
Cedar has a long and successful track record of program managing both business and technology transformation engagements, including complex IT integrations involving mergers of leading international banks. The AGILE approach adopted by Cedar’s PMO team helps protect the Return on Investments, and also ensure the business returns on the transformation program is delivered on time.
- Governance Structure: Our practices on governance for large scale programs helps create visibility at the CXO / Executive Committee level and engages key stakeholders at an operational level. Cedar’s template library relates to all key PMO functions including Charters, Communication, Risk Logs, Resource trackers and Agile tools including Burndown charts. This drives fast-track adoption of industry standard practices.
- Planning:
Key to any program management is planning. Our planning methodology marries into our governance practices; provides a summarized / high-level plan that defines the top 20- 25 activities of the program on a single sheet of paper and a low-level plan that articulates the detailed activities, inter-dependencies, timelines, and resources. This is then socialized with all stakeholders to build collective ownership.
Cedar uses its proprietary PRIMATECH toolkit to define the program plan, activities, key milestones and also manage the program timelines, tasks and budget. - Measurement Rigour: What gets measured, gets managed. Cedar succeeds and adds value in the rigour of measurement. Measuring progress against timelines, quality, budget and impact are all equally important and critical for timely action and course correction where required. Cedar tracks and publishes these on digital program boards and physically, as charts in the actual program management office.
- AGILE: The sprint workshop-based approach driven by Cedar helps getting client stakeholders focused on timely completion of each sprint, and leverage Cedar’s leadership team experience and subject matter inputs in driving the program. The AGILE approach adopted by Cedar’s PMO team helps protect the Return on Investments and ensure the business returns on the transformation program is delivered on time.
- Change Management: A proactive, effective, and disciplined approach by the PMO function to change management is critical to the success and longevity of the transformation. Cedar’s change management processes not only get the users well oriented and trained on the new platform, but also, drives home the top 10 benefits that the change is bringing.
