The bank had both projects managed using traditional waterfall methods and projects using agile methods in its IT organisation, and how to make the two project management approaches co-exist peacefully to improve performance was an issue that BMO wanted to improve.
Background
The Bank of Montreal (BMO), founded in 1817 and headquartered in Toronto, Canada, is the oldest bank in Canada and has become one of Canadas top five banks, now with 1,550 branches within Canada and around the world.
As the eighth largest bank by assets in North America, BMO provides personal and commercial banking, global markets and investment banking services to more than 12 million customers in a sincere and responsible effort to help them make real financial progress and is committed to a prosperous economy, a more sustainable future and an inclusive society.
Key Issues
Most of the banks operations were submerged in spreadsheets, emails and legacy core systems. This approach presented a number of challenges, including long process completion times, misallocation of resources and limited visibility of all projects to members of senior management.
BMO found its IT development and maintenance projects to be long and cumbersome, IT overburdened and they wanted shorter turnaround times and streamlined workflows. In addition, the bank had both projects managed using traditional waterfall methods and projects using agile methods in its IT organisation, and how to make the two project management approaches co-exist peacefully to improve performance was an issue that BMO wanted to improve.
Solution
BMOs Vice President of Technology Development Investment Banking Group and Risk Management, Mr. Leung Kwok Kei, saw the opportunity to improve workflow visibility and efficiency and ultimately chose the very flexible and stable PM project management software solution.
The supplier of PM is WisageTech, which has been specialising in enterprise management software development for 18 years and has independently developed over 10 million lines of Java source code, 120 apps and 80 different system interfaces, covering a wide range of enterprise project management areas, with a highly flexible and scalable product that supports local or cloud deployment. The product is highly flexible and scalable, supporting local or cloud deployment, and has served over 500 enterprises, including Deloitte Management Consulting, China Mobile and China Southern Airlines.
The project management software PM is deployed in a team of 500 people in the BMO IT organisation. The system supports business decisions in a clear and simple way, accelerating the efficiency of IT operations management and improving the quality of management.
With PM, which supports both traditional and agile projects, managers have the flexibility to manage their projects using either a waterfall or agile approach. In waterfall development, teams can build detailed timelines (with dependencies, Gantt charts etc.) with the help of PMs powerful tools. can also provide flexible features such as Kanban and other Scrum tools to benefit agile teams and give projects the benefits of agile efficiency.
In addition, PM combines ongoing development and maintenance projects with the ongoing "non-project" processes, tasks and activities that take up two-thirds of most enterprises IT budgets. This allows BMOs operations and technology leaders to understand ongoing resource commitments, effectively control resources and direct them to the highest value activities in the organisation. Not only that, the implementation of PM gives leadership a comprehensive view of the immediate, current and likely future state of infrastructure and operations.
"Putting in PM has forced us to look at our existing processes," said Vice President, Ki Leung, who is pleased with the deployment of PM. " is superior to typical project management software in solving the process-related problems that development teams often encounter. It helps managers implement best practices, supports CMMI certification and continuous process improvement."
The Bank of Montreal (BMO), founded in 1817 and headquartered in Toronto, Canada, is the oldest bank in Canada and has become one of Canadas top five banks, now with 1,550 branches within Canada and around the world.
As the eighth largest bank by assets in North America, BMO provides personal and commercial banking, global markets and investment banking services to more than 12 million customers in a sincere and responsible effort to help them make real financial progress and is committed to a prosperous economy, a more sustainable future and an inclusive society.
Key Issues
Most of the banks operations were submerged in spreadsheets, emails and legacy core systems. This approach presented a number of challenges, including long process completion times, misallocation of resources and limited visibility of all projects to members of senior management.
BMO found its IT development and maintenance projects to be long and cumbersome, IT overburdened and they wanted shorter turnaround times and streamlined workflows. In addition, the bank had both projects managed using traditional waterfall methods and projects using agile methods in its IT organisation, and how to make the two project management approaches co-exist peacefully to improve performance was an issue that BMO wanted to improve.
Solution
BMOs Vice President of Technology Development Investment Banking Group and Risk Management, Mr. Leung Kwok Kei, saw the opportunity to improve workflow visibility and efficiency and ultimately chose the very flexible and stable PM project management software solution.
The supplier of PM is WisageTech, which has been specialising in enterprise management software development for 18 years and has independently developed over 10 million lines of Java source code, 120 apps and 80 different system interfaces, covering a wide range of enterprise project management areas, with a highly flexible and scalable product that supports local or cloud deployment. The product is highly flexible and scalable, supporting local or cloud deployment, and has served over 500 enterprises, including Deloitte Management Consulting, China Mobile and China Southern Airlines.
The project management software PM is deployed in a team of 500 people in the BMO IT organisation. The system supports business decisions in a clear and simple way, accelerating the efficiency of IT operations management and improving the quality of management.
With PM, which supports both traditional and agile projects, managers have the flexibility to manage their projects using either a waterfall or agile approach. In waterfall development, teams can build detailed timelines (with dependencies, Gantt charts etc.) with the help of PMs powerful tools. can also provide flexible features such as Kanban and other Scrum tools to benefit agile teams and give projects the benefits of agile efficiency.
In addition, PM combines ongoing development and maintenance projects with the ongoing "non-project" processes, tasks and activities that take up two-thirds of most enterprises IT budgets. This allows BMOs operations and technology leaders to understand ongoing resource commitments, effectively control resources and direct them to the highest value activities in the organisation. Not only that, the implementation of PM gives leadership a comprehensive view of the immediate, current and likely future state of infrastructure and operations.
"Putting in PM has forced us to look at our existing processes," said Vice President, Ki Leung, who is pleased with the deployment of PM. " is superior to typical project management software in solving the process-related problems that development teams often encounter. It helps managers implement best practices, supports CMMI certification and continuous process improvement."
