HMRC: Delivering The Re-Set And Relaunch Of A DevOps Programme To Achieve Tangible Benefits And Stakeholder Engagement

HM Revenue & Customs had recognised that its existing DevOps programme was failing to gain engagement or traction from some key stakeholders. The programme had struggled to demonstrate measurable benefits and overall had a negative perception within some areas of the business.

The Project

Green Park were engaged to re-set and relaunch this programme to deliver the business engagement and tangible benefits that had not been realised under the previous approach. Working collaboratively with HMRC, Green Park helped create a new vision, strategy and a set of offerings that made use of digital and cyber technology. The programme was rebranded and re-launched as Continuous Delivery (CD) Continuous Integration (CI) Programme and included: 

• Adoption of Continuous Delivery (DevOps, SecOps, WebOps) – approved by the SRO.
• Driving the integration of teams, technologies and services through a consistent approach to embedding new business processes that utilises common frameworks.
• Improvement of Cloud and on-premises infrastructure (servers / storage / networking).
• Existing and future tooling optimisation to reduce cost and duplication of licensing and improve performance and governance to drive operational improvement.

Additionally, Green Park provided support to make structural changes to the programme team to establish the CD CI Programme. These comprised:

• Adoption of agile practices and creation of a central backlog.
• Development of Terms of Reference (ToR), Team Objectives (OKRS) and Services Catalogue.
• Restructure of the team to provide internal capability development opportunities through shadowing and mentoring.

The focus was on delivering tangible benefits each quarter despite a 50% reduction in the size of the team. These included cost avoidance through the development of solutions in-house, as opposed to using an external supplier, and reducing resource requirement through streamlining of processes. Green Park were also able to improve performance against service level agreements and create time savings by unblocking issues on programmes.

To manage the transformation of the CD CI programme, Green Park established a Continuous Delivery Champions Network and Community of Interest to support the awareness and adoption of new ways of working, provide coaching, and drive the cultural change required.

2020 Strategic Sourcing Strategy

As an extension of the work on the CD CI programme, Green Park were asked to assist HMRC’s wider transformation, providing programme management expertise to support their 2020 Strategic Sourcing Strategy. The project required Programme Managers to work with the commercial team and CDIO to create high level, detailed plans for major supplier contract extensions, forming the basis for the development of the client’s joint supplier plan.

The project included the further management of the above programmes, working closely with the department to ensure completion of activities within the strategy and, where applicable, amending the strategy as the negotiations progressed. Project risk logs and progress reporting were also utilised to monitor and report on progress against the programme.

 

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