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Hybrid Project Management in Finance for Digital Transformation (Case Review)



Digital transformation is one of the biggest culture and business transformation all over the World. As a Burgan Bank, we decided to convert bank’s work habits from conventional methods to agile / digital methods in 2016. Based on this decision, Burgan Bank has established a group of Digital Banking for future banking technologies. This group had its own IT branch in addition to Bank’s Information Technology group. In 2018, Burgan Bank upper management decided to change organization structure by merging IT departments so that digital transformation could be sustainable. This merge has increased power of decision and strategy to enable digital transformation by enabling hybrid Project management.


Hybrid Project management enables bank to meet all type of projects such as new products, regulation and efficiency projects. For new product enablements, we decided to use Agile Scrum Project methodology to meet market condition changes and manage change requests efficiently. However, we decided to use Agile Kanban for operational efficiency and risk mitigation projects because the scope is definite and teams are dynamic. On the other hand, we decided to manage legal and government projects with waterfall methodology. In addtion, Turkish banking regulation and supervision agency is required banks to manage IT processes under COBIT 4 standards.


Empower hybrid Project management life cycle for digital transformation. Workshop completed by 80+ attendees and strategic plan has been agreed on going with hybrid Project management to enable digital transformation. Based on Agile structure, every team members divided into 9-10 attendees to enable scrum team structure. Each teams were organized from developer, analyst, test expert, digital channel business members and managers. This workshop provided us to resemble scrum teams and enabled members to work together synchronous. Moreover, workshop enables to identify digital banking strategy and strenghten colloboration to maximize efficiency.


As a result, multi-regulative banking sector is required to be managed hybrid Project management in align with business requirements and market changes in Turkey. Furthermore, many banks in Turkey has already started digital transformation and has leader role in the MEA region. Burgan Bank has started digital transformation journey with hybrid Project management strategy to boost digital banking income.


By Ömer Ragip Özkan

Speaker @ PPMConferences.com by Trusted Advisors

Department Head of PMO, Test and IT Budget @ Burgan Bank (Turkey)

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