10 common challenges in a CMS-Payment Switch Upgrade or Migration Project (Part II)!!

Your Wait is over as we are back with continuation of our previous blog for the challenges that Banks usually faced while doing CMS Up-gradation/Migration. So in continuation with our Part 1, below are the few more challenges:

6) Aligning Build and Delivery Methodology: Every delivery organization has its own methodologies and templates. The challenge is to make everyone agree to a common template and methodology, so that data / information can be shared across different teams without causing any ambiguity. A deviation from the already established methodology and adopted template results in more effort. Therefore, it’s very common to have some resistance from teams, who need to change or align their delivery as per the agreed new format.

The integration specifications between two systems can be another area of conflict. Typically, during initial assessment, a high-level understanding is achieved between teams on integration method. The actual conflict starts when the technical teams get involved. Different issues ranging versions for supported software, data transmission, access to data, and feature limitation can arise during Technical Specification creation. Preventing and resolving any such conflicts in the project is one of the task for such projects.

7) Managing CHANGE in the Project: As the project moves into Execution phase, a clearer picture for the new solution emerges. Also, more team members (especially business and operations users) get involved in the project. This is the period when the changes are requested to the agreed solution / strategy to align it more with business need or address some problems in the existing processes or simply to include some futuristic solution.

A proper change management process in the project helps to capture these requirements, analyze their feasibility, evaluate their impact on project, segregate them into proper category and determine actions. However, the challenge is to handle change requests effectively to avoid any cost / schedule overrun for the project.

8) Implementing Quality Checks: In a complicated project as this often Testing is not given its due importance. Some of the common reasons behind this approach are

• Over reliance on the product vendor to deliver a perfect solution,
• A view that scheme certification covers all customer critical scenarios
• Confidence that business users and operations team are best placed to conduct any testing,
• Efforts to keep the overall project schedule / cost under check

Therefore, the project team typically faces two challenges in implementing proper quality check

• Determine the testing needs at early stage of the project, get necessary estimates from professional testing teams and incorporate same in project cost and schedule
• Implement necessary test metrics and capture relevant data at different stages to showcase benefits from involvement of proper testing team in a migration project.

9) Adaptation to new system & new processes: Migration projects often leads to new practices that require people to change the way they’ve worked in the past. These changes make people uncomfortable. Moreover, some technology or users might get obsolete because of the new system / solution. This results in user resistance which can impact the realization of expected value and ROI for an organization.

Organizations typically focus user adoption efforts on training. While training is vital, it does not address one of the most important roadblocks to user adoption – user resistance to change.

At times planning a proper user adoption strategy which demonstrates the value that can be achieved through new solution, includes user’s perspective in solution development and gives users ample time to learn the new application can be challenge due to the stringent timeline and budgets of a project

10) Keeping the project compliant to bank’s audit standard:  As payment switch migration is one of the critical technology transformation project for the Bank and it can impact customer data and financial data, these projects can be subjected to audit checks anytime in future.

A lot of documentations are created as part of deliverables, governance, compliance requirement during the project life cycle. A few examples of critical artifacts are the signed off specifications, test result logs, the sign-off on data migration, the sign-off on data reconciliation and so on.

Understanding the audit requirements at the beginning of the project and managing the required evidences during the project life cycle for any future audit is another challenge for the project.

Having knowledge of above factors helps in planning and forming an effecting strategy on how to tackle these challenges. Not every challenge will be a threat but has a potential to become one, hence effective management is very critical. Once the areas are identified and defined then addressing or mitigating is possible. Verinite has successfully performed such upgradation and migration project. With our expertise we help clients achieve their goal. So if you have a CMS or a Payment switch migration, upgradation on radar please get in touch with us, Verinite would be glad to assists you in making it a success story!