When Your Core Conversion Project Hits the COVID-19 Iceberg

Editor’s note: Direct Federal Credit Union is a one-branch, $750 million credit union located in Needham, Mass. It is undergoing its first core conversion since 1984 and has partnered with CU Times to document its journey until the new core is anticipated go live in 2021. Contributing authors will be members of the project team and each article will tell a story from a different point of view. Read its previous articles and continue to follow along at cutimes.com/instantinsights.

Imagine you have spent two years building a new Project Management Office (PMO). You were hired in the anticipation of the first core conversion in 35 years, as well as the growing portfolio of ambitious projects. You spend two years introducing new processes, training, implementing a project management platform and supporting projects tied to organizational goals. It is finally go-time – and the team is ready. As 2020 starts, everyone is ready to go, and vendors have been vetted and met. Teams start weekly meetings, the exchange of information flows, and teams start to produce needed deliverables. All is smooth sailing, and as work picks up, you are feeling centered and prepared. And then COVID-19 happens … the iceberg no one saw coming.

There have been changes to how we work and new routes to consider, but our destination remains the same. I believe the early decisions about our conversion’s structure and setup have guided us during uncertain and unstable times, and I wanted to share my favorite takeaways about our core conversion in the time of COVID.

A Strong Project Management Platform Is Essential

We at Direct spent a lot of time managing any number of annual projects to achieve our aggressive annual growth goals. Without project management, our past coordination of projects relied upon many in-person meetings, limited consistency in how work is performed and scarce communication. With the core conversion looming, it was clear that we needed to streamline how we managed projects and communicated about project work.

My strategic goal for 2019 was to research and implement a PM platform that promotes task ownership, improves communication, and allows the PMO to run project portfolio reports and insights. It needed to be smart, easy to use, flexible and highly customizable. I assessed a half dozen platforms at a high level, conducted deep dives of the three finalists with a team of future users, and chose Wrike. Wrike was perfect for Direct: It was easy to navigate, possessed flexible sharing settings, wasn’t too PM-heavy, and was suitable for both project and operational work. Also, Wrike is very affordable, with a robust user community and excellent support. We expected communication and organization improvements, but we were shown just how useful the tool was when COVID hit. We view tasks as a team through screen sharing and continue real-time communication, regardless of whether the team members are onsite. Communication within Wrike can be at task level or project level, and the former keeps comments concise and relevant to the task. Wrike showed teams what tasks were due, generated reports about where attention was needed and easily quantified project statuses. As COVID cases increased and stay-at-home orders were issued, Wrike reached out to us to offer free collaborator licenses and weekly web conferences that covered strategies for effective working from home.

The Lesson: When you have a large project team with team members in a variety of locations, having a platform in place that allows the entire team to see all aspects of the project at once, communicate effectively and produce quantifiable data is imperative.

Planning Is Key

Large endeavors are the reason Project Management is a discipline and profession. The breaking down of gargantuan scopes of work into smaller pieces and sharing the work is how we cross a large project finish line. We took nearly two months to flesh out how exactly we should break down the work. To make these decisions, we all had to do two very difficult things: Speak up about our concerns and listen to the concerns of others.

We landed on the following approach: The conversion needed to be a program – an umbrella that covered the projects underneath it. We determined that there were 11 projects in total that made up the program, and they mostly correlated with our existing departments. We also had one project deal specifically with our digital banking conversion, and one that handled our debit card conversion, as those are key program milestones (we decided to go big with our scope, and tackle other necessary conversions simultaneously to the core conversion).

Each project is run by a Conversion Action Team (CAT) and most program team members serve on multiple CATs. The CATs have their own governance and autonomy in decisions that will impact their individual department’s operations, but we bring it all together in a weekly program meeting. The CATs also meet weekly. The program approves templates and provides various tools and guidance about matters that affect all or most CATs. The strategic goal of a successful conversion is shared by everyone in the credit union and we are all committed to its success and fully accountable for its outcomes.

This approach keeps the subject matter experts involved in important discussions and decisions, and helps us all feel empowered and collaborative. Joe Walsh, our CEO, and I are on every CAT and attend every meeting, and that offers continuity and the opportunity to integrate information across the projects’ and program’s levels.

The Lesson: A core conversion may have different levels of governance and it helps to have all hands on deck.

Internal & External Project Management Is Helpful When Roles Are Clearly Defined

In large projects, it is easy to get into a situation where it feels there are too many cooks in the kitchen. Within our core conversion, we have our core vendor, digital vendor, debit card vendor and external PM consultants involved in the work, as well as other vendors. Vendors have been effective when onsite and when interacting remotely. Our PM consultants review project plans from all vendors involved, consolidate them and provide tasks to the PMO to build into the program in two-month intervals. They bring the expertise of managing different conversions. The core vendor also has a PM who is the integrator of their team. She advises us who to speak to from their team as specific questions come up, and she communicates proactively and regularly. With COVID, we have cancelled all onsite vendor activity, but quickly saw that our vendors were great at remote work and we have been experiencing the same levels of service.

The Lesson: Having various levels of PM offers the advantage of deeper focus and expertise. Shifting onsite vendor activities to remote can offer the same level of service while keeping staff healthier.

A core conversions is likely the toughest undertaking on which a credit union can embark. It may seem overwhelming and stressful at first, but with the right amount of focus, research, collaboration and goodwill, a core conversion can be an incredible success story. We at Direct hope that this ends up being our finest hour as an organization. We are already learning a lot and feel energized for the coming changes.

Maria Vasilevsky, PMP is Director of PMO for Direct FCU in Needham, Mass. She can be reached at mvasilevsky@direct.com.