Pre-go-live readiness review
An independent read on whether the solution, the data and the people are ready — and what the conditions should be if the answer is "not quite".
Architecture & assurance
An Independent View at the Points That Are Hard to Reverse.
Assurance for finance technology programmes: before go-live, at a design gate, or afterwards when a solution is live and not yet delivering what it was bought for.
Why independent
A programme cannot easily assure itself.
Not through dishonesty — through proximity. Everyone close to a programme has been living with its compromises long enough for them to look normal. The risks that get escalated are the ones somebody noticed recently; the ones that have been there since month two have quietly become part of the furniture.
An assurance review is worth buying at the moments where being wrong is expensive and slow to undo. Those moments are usually known in advance.
- A design gate where the decision is hard to reverse
- Six to eight weeks before a planned go-live
- After a first close that did not go the way it was supposed to
- When a programme is being asked for more time and the sponsor wants an independent view
- When a solution has been live for two cycles and the promised benefits have not appeared
What we assure
Nine areas, scoped to where the risk actually is.
A review that covers everything equally covers nothing well. We agree at the start which of these matter for your gate and go deep on those.
Design and build assurance
Whether what is being built still matches what was designed, and whether the design still matches the requirement.
Testing and reconciliation assurance
Test coverage against risk rather than against scope, and whether the reconciliation approach would convince an auditor.
Close-process readiness
The first close is the real test. Sequence, dependencies, ownership, and what happens when a task fails at 6pm on day three.
Cutover and migration review
Opening balances, historical comparatives, parallel run design and the decision criteria for going or not going.
Post-go-live stabilisation
What is genuinely defective, what is a process gap, and what is simply unfamiliar — three problems that need three different responses.
Performance and process optimisation
Runtime, close duration, manual intervention and the specific points where the calendar is being lost.
Controls and governance review
Validation design, segregation, change control and the evidence trail behind a reported figure.
Backlog rationalisation
Separating functional debt from technical debt from wish list, and putting the three in an order somebody can defend.
What you get
A report a sponsor can act on the same week.
- Independent assurance report
- Red / Amber / Green assessment by workstream or risk area
- Critical go-live blockers, and the conditions attached to any conditional go
- Findings register with evidence and recommendations
- Prioritised remediation plan
- Executive playback and a steering-committee pack
- Typical duration
- 1–2 weeks for a focused gate · 2–4 weeks for a broader review
- Ongoing assurance can be structured as recurring senior support across the programme's major milestones rather than as a single engagement.
How we report
Amber has to mean something.
A status that is amber for four consecutive gates is not a status, it is a habit. Every rating we give carries the evidence behind it, the specific condition that would move it to green, and a named owner. Where we cannot substantiate a concern within the time box, we say that too — an assurance report that inflates its own findings costs you credibility the next time somebody raises a real one.
Related
Where this sits.
- Solution Architecture & Design Authority — continuous architecture ownership rather than assurance at gates
- Group Reporting Health Check — the same discipline applied to one live consolidation solution
- SAC Health Check — the equivalent for a live planning solution
Next step
Tell us which gate you are approaching.
The date, what is being decided, and what is worrying you about it. If an assurance review is not the right instrument, we will say so — sometimes what a programme needs is a decision, not a report.