Australasian Enterprise Architecture Excellence Awards
Finalists and Winners Announced
Sydney, Australia – October 19-21 2015 saw the running of the first Australasian Enterprise Architecture Conference at scenic Luna Park in Sydney.
The event brought together keynotes, selected speakers and practitioners from all over Australia and New Zealand, as well as a number of other countries including the UK, US and Denmark. Amongst many highlights was the running of the first ever Australasian Enterprise Architecture Excellence Awards, which attracted a high-calibre group of nominations from companies across the Australia/New Zealand region.
After a difficult judging process, the Program Committee members were able to arrive at a short-list of 3 finalists that were to be recognised on stage during the first day of the conference. Each finalist was given 20 minutes to talk about their achievements, which further reinforced why these companies were being recognised for their efforts.
The Finalists
Enterprise Architects for their work with 350.org
As part of its Corporate Social Responsibility strategy, Enterprise Architects endorsed a targeted initiative “Repowering Renewables Program” to empower organisations who were working to bring about a 100% renewable energy future. This is a highly innovative and disruptive industry, and presents a great opportunity for Enterprise Architects to demonstrate how its “Architecture Thinking” approach can tackle complex business challenges. Our consultants donated their time and skills to provide our strategy and enterprise architecture services to climate leaders to rebuild and renew their organisations “better, faster, cheaper”.
To date Enterprise Architects have worked with three organisations that are actively and strategically contributing to the transformation to a 100% renewable future, including 350 Perth (part of 350.org). Specifically, EA assisted 350 Perth to define its business architecture and establish which levels of the organisation, from local to global, require capability lifts to address their chosen strategies.
Fragile to Agile for their work with ME Bank
Shortly after joining industry super fund-owned bank ME, CEO Jamie McPhee asked Fragile to Agile to assess the ability of the Bank’s existing technology to support its business strategy and growth aspirations. Fragile to Agile designed a transformation program to revitalise and position the ME’s technology to support its aggressive growth strategy. Based on Fragile to Agile’s time and cost estimates, the program was approved by the Bank’s executive and board in January 2011. Under Fragile to Agile’s architecture and program oversight and using its unique conceptual design process, the entire program was completed in 2015.
Sydney Trains for their new Rail Operations Centre
Deliver a new ROC to co‐locate all Day of Operations functions and introduce more efficient processes leveraging new technology for better Incident Management, Customer Information Management and Disruption Management.
The Winner
With some fanfare, and set against the incredible backdrop of Sydney Harbour, Adelaide-based Fragile to Agile was announced as the winner at the Conference Dinner by Mr Paul Preiss, president of Iasa Global. There to accept the award was their CEO, Glenn Smyth. Fragile to Agile’s work on the ME Bank Transformation Program was the quintessential Enterprise Architecture led transformation program, running for nearly 5 years, and rebuilding the bank from a technology and process perspective over that time.
Pictured (L-R): Darryl Carr – Conference Chair, Glenn Smyth – CEO Fragile to Agile and Paul Preiss – President Iasa Global.
Recognising the amazing efforts of the team at Fragile to Agile, ME CEO, Jamie McPhee said:
“ME invested nearly $90 million over five years in its transformation program, building and integrating 7 major new software systems and moving 320,000 customers on to these systems, all with minimal disruptions. The new systems are state-of-the-art and will keep ME competitive well into the future.
“When we planned transformation we had the option to renovate the house or build a new one. While more challenging, we chose the latter. The result is a brand-new piece of banking architecture that’s been built to be updated – future-proofing the Bank. That’s a structural advantage other organisations would be envious of.”
On the 4th of May 2014 the then CIO of ME, Kathryn Hawkins, said this of Fragile to Agile:
“As CIO of ME Bank I was engaged to execute on their Technology Transformation road map and it was a dream come true to walk into the quality of work completed by Fragile to Agile to prepare the program for execution. The Fragile to Agile methodology is second to none, their systematic approach and ability to maintain integrity of scope is the foundation of success. The success of the Transformation of ME Bank into the Digital Era was predicated on the brilliant work completed by Fragile to Agile in the assessment current stage, design of future state, and the creation of an executable road map; a road map that stood firm through 4 years of execution. Fragile to Agile worked closely with us through the entire execution to assist with maintaining scope and ensuring our delivery. I hope I have the opportunity to work with Fragile to Agile again in the future.”
On the 15th of May 2014, the then Program Manager for Transformation Trevor Mason, said this of Fragile to Agile:
“The best PMs have learned through their experiences that to exceed rather than just succeed they have to think beyond the basics of project management. It is not enough just to know about scheduling, budgeting, subject matter, and so on. To be really successful, one has to look beyond the mundane and rise above the ordinary. ME Bank’s Transformation Program did rise above the ordinary and Fragile to Agile where fundamental to that success. Backed by their brilliant methodology, the team from Fragile to Agile never lost sight of the big picture and worked tirelessly alongside us to make sure we delivered exceptional value to all of ME Bank’s stakeholders.”
Just some of the facts about the transformation program, and the benefits realised by ME from this work include:
- Over 90% of all deposit account opening processes are now straight through processed
- Improvement in end to end Home Loan Mortgage process:
- Improved conditional approval rates; from 4 – 10 days to 50% having an instant decision
- Letter of Offer generation from 3 hours to seconds
- 75% reduction in data rekeying
- 50% of the Bank’s home loans are now conditionally approved by the system (from zero per cent before the Program) and the time it takes to get this approval has been cut from 3 days to 3 minutes.
- An uplift in time to market for new products, what was taking 12 months now takes 3 months
- Break down of the communication barriers between business and ICT
This was a truly worthy winner and a great example of the benefits of Enterprise Architecture in assisting organisations to realise their business strategy and transformation goals. The committee and organisers of the Australasian Enterprise Architecture Conference congratulate Fragile to Agile on an amazing achievement.
The Australasian Enterprise Architecture Conference is the only specialist conference on enterprise architecture in the Asia Pacific region. It provides a regional forum for sharing experiences, best practices and the latest thinking about enterprise architecture. It is the most important event of the year for enterprise architecture professionals across Australia and New Zealand and attracts speakers and participants from around the world. It is an open, vendor independent conference, organised by EA practitioners for EA practitioners.
Fragile to Agile® is a specialist enterprise and solution architecture service provider with a business driven approach designed to resonate with executives. Fragile to Agile® is fiercely independent and product agnostic. This ensures that we are both solution independent and have no conflict of interest in delivering the optimal business driven architecture for an organisation. This independence enables Fragile to Agile® to focus entirely on delivering impartial advice and maximum value to our clients. Our value proposition is to enable the execution of business strategy with confidence whilst minimising cost and risk and maximising agility.
Iasa Global – Advancing Architecture Professional Excellence. Formally known as the International Association for Software Architects, we have changed our name to be just Iasa Global, a non-profit association for ALL IT Architects. Iasa Global is headquartered in beautiful Austin, TX but our reach is global with multiple chapters around the world.
Established in 2002, the association is committed to improving the quality of the IT architecture industry by developing and delivering standards, education programs and developing accreditation programs and services that optimize the development of the architecture profession. Iasa membership consists of approximately 80,000 members located in over 50 countries.
