About Cuscal

In 2012 the Reserve Bank of Australia (‘RBA’) set a challenge to the Australian financial industry – to make payments in real-time for every Australian by 2018. As a significant player and Authorised Deposit-taking Institution (ADI), Cuscal Technology and Product Services (Cuscal) has extensive capabilities, including card and acquiring products, mobile payments, fraud prevention, EFT switching and settlements. Cuscal is one of the primary architects of Australia’s New Payments Platform (NPP). They notably run the rediATM scheme, one of Australia’s largest ATM networks, with over 100 clients from various industries, including financial services, airlines, fintech and retail.

Cuscal’s Challenge

Cuscal quickly recognised that to effect such significant change within the tight timeframe and to minimise – costs; it needed a new way of working. Rashu Kharbanda, Cuscal’s Head of Architecture & Solution Delivery, explains how NPP works: “With NPP – we essentially act as the middleman to process real-time payments, track settlements and manage disputes and investigations on behalf of our clients. We also have our own white-label mobile banking solution that our clients and their customers can use to make real-time payments as well as manage all of their mobile banking needs”.

As the 2018 deadline approached, Cuscal found itself at a critical point in the project. Payment processing has five or six streams that interface with – the NPP Payments Engine, and it is in this crucial area where Cuscal needed help.

The Paradigm Innovations Solution

As part of the NPP initiative at Cuscal, it was recognised that Cuscal’s governance and delivery management frameworks needed a change to accommodate and adopt an Agile approach. An Agile mindset would deliver the current project and serve the organisation in the long term for all subsequent projects. Paradigm Innovations worked closely across all levels of Cuscal to achieve this goal.

Overall Approach

• Identified stakeholders and defined their roles & responsibilities.
• Determined vision of value and success using stakeholder matrix, RACI chart and Agile roles & responsibilities matrix.
• Stakeholders identified included core and non-core roles:
  • Senior Product Managers
  • Product Owners
  • Project Managers and Scrum Masters
  • Delivery Teams
  • Delivery Managers and Practice Leads
  • Senior Leadership Team and other numerous stakeholder groups
• Analysed the existing frameworks (Project Investment and Project Management). Identified change drivers (‘burning platform’), desired future state and operating model. Developed a strategic roadmap of how to get there.
• Created a plan to enable the adoption of an Agile mindset, focused on continuous learning to establish the necessary processes, governance, and tools to manage several portfolios.
• Recommended and implemented changes to Cuscal’s delivery and governance frameworks for embedding the desired change, including roles and responsibilities, key metrics, communication plan, and training matrix.
• Identified opportunities for learning, development and training. E.g., Product Owner training, Scrum training and Scrum Team training.
• The training was delivered for the Product Owner program to four groups of participants.
• The training was delivered for the Scrum Master program to seven groups of participants.

Conducted numerous roadshows and engaged with various types of communication tailored to engage with different stakeholders. E.g., Account Management, Finance, PMO/PMP, and key practice areas to deliver tangible outcomes.

Successful Outcome

• improved and aligned delivery and governance frameworks with significant improvement in throughput and issues reduction.
• Fully embedded an effective Agile mindset and continuous learning culture at Cuscal.
• Aided Cuscal in delivering projects in the NPP, Digital and EFT portfolios successfully and on time, supporting Cuscal’s strategic objectives of levelling the competitive landscape with big banks. E.g., NPP Wave I, Apple PayDay 2, Samsung Pay (30+ projects). Other examples include aiding Cuscal in establishing a sustainable EFT portfolio to manage more than 40%of Australia’s ATMs.
• Established first, followed by several waves of Agile transformation at Team, Portfolio and cross Portfolio levels.

Created a sustainable Agile portfolio delivery framework that the teams could reliably and consistently maintain for the long term