Thomas Watkins

Contractor -

Selection of project completed during my time in this position.

Commission Disclosure: Project aiming to deliver automated commission disclosure complaint communications to our customers.

• Fostered collaborative environment to enhance team's performance.
• Liaised between business and technical teams, bridged communication gap - interpret needs to requirements.
• Led sprint planning sessions, ensured alignment with business objectives.
• Created and implemented concept of data driven decision tree's
• Performed in-depth data analysis to determine automation of decision tree, giving confidence in data accuracy.
• Reviewed and managed backlogs to improve prioritisation and recognise dependencies.
• Developed and managed 65 user stories through to delivery, resulting in 350,000 automated complaint letters being sent.

MyFinance: Project aiming to drive greater customer self service of financial agreements via a digital portal

• Created 'Voluntary Terminations' business case for business prioritisation, including Business/IT estimates and projected impact
• Led the analysis of adding 'voluntary terminations' quotes functionality onto 'MyFinance' customer portal.
• Successfully developed full suite of user stories and process flows, enabling development to commence
• Created wireframes and prototypes to visualise design concepts before finalising them, ensuring business satisfaction.
• Developed and managed test scripts to streamline testing across the project.

Permanent -

Selection of projects completed during my time in this position.

Nationwide Digital - Lead Digital Transformation Analyst

The roll out of Agile across the organisation, working in several teams: Central Agile Service and Ops team (CASO), Governance & Control and Nationwide Digital Accelerator Platform

Main responsibilities:

• Ways of working lead

- Created and rolled out a user story standards document to feature 8 teams within Digital.

- Created and rolled out a release note template to track the implemented changes for each release to 8 feature teams within Digital.

- Created several standard artefacts to be rolled out to all the business areas, including: Test Outcome Reports and Hypercare support model.

• Owned the revamp of 150 user stories, making them more consumable by the business teams and more understandable for the development team.
• Led the creation of a combined Operational Readiness Checks/NFRs list, including a weighted scale to determine the level of checks required based on Risk/Impact, Release Type and Implementation Approach.
• Shaped the roadmap for Digital Technology and Engineering - Governance and Control, breaking into 5 major initiatives, including Finance, Logistics and IT Risk, created a product backlog and prioritised and provided detailed walkthroughs to the Head of Technology and Engineering and prioritised according to their overall Technology roadmap.
• Creation of data flow mapping for IT Run control, using a visual representation to bring to life for the management committee.
• Generating and Analysing cross feature team performance data, sharing with Digital community prior to formal submission into IT Operations & Service Delivery (ITO&SD).
• Led the Analysis for a multi-team consolidation, including Operation Model and Work-stream breakdown to reduce duplication and fragmentation of work.
• Created a detailed System access matrix for all roles within Digital Technology and Engineering, this will allow for a smooth onboarding/off boarding process, gaining value from new starters at the earliest possible time.

Strategic Originations Enhancements – Lead Business Analyst Role

The follow up from SO2 with the aim being to deliver further product features and servicing functions

• Led a team of 3 Business Analysts across the project, managing timescales and feature prioritisation.
• Created detailed resource plans and structured the Analysis work-stream accordingly.
• Allocated functional areas of scope to the BA team, monitoring progress through regular catch-ups and weekly meeting.
• Developed the Roadmap and Analysis Approach documentation.
• Worked closely with the Head of Transformation to determine feature prioritisation, setting up regular 1-1 sessions to provide updates on the Analysis progress.
• Developed a Target Operation Model for a specific manual process, including average handling time and projected volumes to create a detailed cost/saving comparison, upping the documented benefit of the Automated re-designation functionality from £3m to Circa £8.5m per annum.
• Chaired the Business Design Authority (BDA) where Business Architecture decisions were made, including functionality area prioritisation.

Strategic Originations 2 – Lead Business Analyst Role

Strategic Originations 2 (SO2) was the second phase of a major platform move to SAP for savings accounts, driving additional functionality and a breadth of Savings Products to support the business proposition. Circa £55m budget. I took over as lead part way through the analysis phase through to implementation.

• Led a team of 6 BAs (Perm and DRC) through detailed analysis:

- Produced and maintained resourcing profile across the programme, ensuring efficiency/allocation across the team

- Point of escalation for BA team as well as surrounding Programme team

- Mentored junior members of the team, providing BA specific coaching as well as more general soft skill coaching

• Led collaborative design scrum sprints sessions including sprint reviews and retrospectives.
• Supported the creation of the user stories, backlog prioritisation and sprint planning.
• Chaired the Business Design Authority (BDA) where Business Architecture decisions where required to take items forward.
• Accountable for traceability of 2500 requirements, working with 10 Developments Centres to complete – set up weekly reporting sessions to monitor progress.
• Managed all change request impact assessments across the BA team, creating a cost/benefit impact of an incoming change, including potential FTE impacts.
• Owned the scope management and major scope simplification to maintain feature integrity and delivery timescales, a portion of the functionality was de-scope

FCA Market Study - Senior Business Analyst

FCA Cash Market Review was a regulatory project initiated to deliver the changes required for Nationwide to administer its cash savings business in line with the compliance directives issued by the FCA in Dec 2015.

• Created BA resource profile across project alongside analysis deliverable estimates, allowing a fully resourced BA team.
• Feedback provided to the British Bankers Association (BBA) regarding the regulations covering rate change notification/reminder timings. based on the feedback the regulations were amended to provide more clarify
• Produced scenario/impact matrix for each regulatory item, these artefacts were used to drive the scope of the project
• Using the FCA regulations, along with the scenario matrix, I was able to identify scope creep from the business unit, the items were de-scoped to protect the regulatory deliverables and timescales.
• Production and approval of regulatory HLRs/DBR's using workshops and meetings, gained key stakeholder buying using 1 on 1 meetings.