# Alan Ward (@alancward.bsky.social) Profile: https://sifa.id/p/alancward.bsky.social Headline: Transformation Advisory | Architecture Leader | CIO/CTO | Portfolio & Programme Recovery | Modernisation | Business Architect | Redesigning Business Models | Goal Wrangler | Tech Exchange Chesterfield ## About Architecture & Transformation Leader helping CIOs navigate complex transformations I solve the thorniest problems in enterprise technology leadership. Over two decades, I've recovered failing programmes worth hundreds of £millions, restructured underperforming supplier relationships, and helped organisations navigate their most challenging technology decisions When your transformation programme is stalling, supplier relationships are deteriorating, or the board is questioning the technology strategy, I'm the person CIOs call You'll also find me building a tech community in the Derbyshire area as part of Chesterfield Tech Meet-up What I do: a) Rescue Failing Programmes I put programmes back on track. When stakeholders have lost confidence and budgets are under threat, or when all projects are suspiciously reporting green, I establish new governance, rebuild relationships, and create realistic delivery roadmaps b) Navigate Complex Supplier Challenges Renegotiating contracts, managing underperforming vendors, and evaluating proposals objectively, I help you cut through supplier politics to focus on long-term value c) Provide Independent Technology Direction From architecture assessments to Target Operating Models, I offer the independent perspective you need when internal viewpoints are clouded by politics or legacy thinking d) Act as Your Strategic Sounding Board Sometimes you need someone who understands both the technical complexities and boardroom realities, someone who can help you think through difficult decisions Achievements: \- Reduced mortality rates in Sheffield by leading a technology transformation that restructured teams around value streams and improved service delivery \- Recovered a failing £150m+ NHS programme by facilitating new integrated delivery plans \- Transformed technology strategy for a £1.6bn FTSE250 company, analysing pain points across ERP, CRM, data, and security domains \- Achieved top regulatory ranking for a major utility through customer journey optimisation and process improvement \- Coordinated multi-agency response during Covid-19 to deliver critical national research How I Work \* Available as Fractional | Contract | Interim \* Direct or through agencies Multi-sector experience: Health, Utilities, Local Government, Telecommunications, Building Materials, Life Sciences Current Focus: Founder of Goal Wrangler \* helping organisations achieve strategic alignment through an Enterprise SaaS offering. The best strategies mean nothing if they're not connected to business outcomes ## Experience - **Founder at Goal Wrangler** (2020 – present) Founder and CEO for Goal Wrangler. Creating the demo and MVP of the software service in parallel to business development for the consultancy. Restarted in 2025 with a fresh angle on the intersection of strategy, transformation and architecture, aimed at CxOs. - **Co-Founder at Tech Exchange Chesterfield** (2025 – present) Tech Exchange Chesterfield is a community-driven collective accelerating local tech talent, innovation and opportunity in the Chesterfield area. We connect people within the tech and digital industry to share skills and knowledge, create career and project opportunities and to build a powerhouse network of talent that can help grow the local tech economy - **Transformation Advisory at Westward Brooks** (2024 – present) - **Director at Silk Hat Studio** (2021 – present) Photography services, specialising in dramatic portraits and story-telling. What story do you want to tell? - **Interim Business Architect at Tri-Borough** (2014 – 2015) Tri-borough was a shared-service model across the 3 London boroughs of City of Westminster, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. I was the Business Architect for the Adult Social Care Customer Journey, with a complex set of stakeholder and multiple work-streams at different stages of progress & deadlines. • Active across 3 local authorities, several hospitals, 2 mental health trusts and several CCGs. The role covered voluntary & independent sector organisations + a number of other West London local authorities & their hospital trusts. • Focussed the programme on the £450m LA care spend, rather than solely the £20m of staffing cost, in order to provide a more holistic response through efficient delivery. • Provided a strategic perspective to business change, guiding all changes towards an integrated whole. • Initiated a design authority group that met monthly to review potential design changes to Adult Social Care operations. • Drew stakeholders towards a unified strategy, by engaging service users and staff in designing a new Target Operating Model for the combined stakeholders. • Created an interactive scenario-driven demand & capacity model covering all activities across social care • Developed a change programme, to deliver results in weeks and months rather than years to ensure that any changes were aligned with long-term, strategic aims. This resulted in the executive and heads of service fully owning the transformation programme, along with team members understanding how they had influenced the changes. Multiple initiatives were implemented including: cross-borough discharges, a full discharge-to-assess & reablement model, practical 7-day working and more consistency in service provision across the boroughs. - **Consultant Business Analyst at Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council** (2008 – 2008) Conducted technical audit for building control across a number of councils in Lancashire as preparation for joint ICT system. Implemented revised processes based on lean principles for Development Control. Conducted options appraisal for information reporting within Adult Social Care. I brought a strategic view to the needs of the departments involved, helping the Business Transformation and IT (BT&IT) director understand short and longer term requirements. I worked across IT software and hardware, licences, contracts, state-of-the-market, training needs, personnel changes and forthcoming legislation. - **Transformation Evangelist / Architect at Award Sounds Ltd** (2005 – present) Director: Customer-focussed transformation consultancy across several sectors (public \- local and central, utilities, telco). Working on strategic and tactical change from an Enterprise Architecture perspective, combined with innovation from a startup perspective and improvement from a lean perspective, all mixed with formal Architecture and Analysis methods. Services include: \- innovation kickstart \- strategic analysis and direction, \- fixed period engagements for troubleshooting/problem finding, \- tailoring combined methodologies to clients, \- mentoring of architecture/analyst staff, \- collaborative development of business models and target operating models \- budgetary analysis and financial planning - **Interim Business Architect / Operating Model Consultant at Nordic Global** (2022 – 2022) Contracted to the UK Advisory team of this global healthcare services consultancy on a short-term engagement with the largest NHS Trust in England. We advised the multi-site Trust on redesigning its operating model to maximise the benefit from the EPR that it is in the process of implementing. - **Enterprise Architect Associate (fractional) at Definia** (2025 – 2025) Engaged with a world-class life-sciences research centre on understanding the value of data and how data is being reused. This short-term discovery engagement across research and bioinformatics uncovered insight that will help shape the centre, its approach to research and data, and highlighted a number of opportunities for short and long term approaches. - **Interim Head of Architecture at Breedon Group plc** (2022 – 2024) Advising on large scale transformation and digital initiatives, steering an enterprise-wide increase in maturity Initiating new approaches to enterprise data and secure IT/OT convergence Advising on technology and data management Advising on design governance through architecture and authorities Developing Target Architecture and sourcing suppliers to deliver - **Interim Enterprise Business Architect at BSI** (2021 – 2022) Engaged in a fledgling Strategy and Architecture team, leading the way on how business architecture could best be adopted in this global, private-sector company. • Reviewed the largest transformation programme in BSI, specifically evaluating the state of the Target Operating Model, assisting with gaps and facilitated planning of Transition States and Interim Operating Models. • Developed reference materials such as enterprise-wide business capability model, value streams, information objects and helped land the use of those artefacts within architectural reviews. • Developed Business Architecture collateral for use in engaging with leadership teams across the company. • Engaged with the main Business Streams within the company, to capture their current business and operating models from an architectural and enterprise perspective. • Worked with HR to facilitate a broader understanding of their newly-defined operating model, from a business architecture perspective and its impact on existing change programmes. - **Interim Senior Business Architect at Office for National Statistics** (2020 – 2021) Leading Business Architecture for a newly-founded team of Service Design and Innovation, bringing a human-centric focus to projects and programmes that have been traditionally led with a focus on data or technology. • Advised on ONS’ response to informing central government on the Covid19 pandemic including the rapid creation of Schools Infection Survey, working with DHSC, DfE, PHE, associated universities and external suppliers. This was developed at pace with frequently changing requirements reflecting the changing government response to the pandemic. I channelled the process development efforts; clarifying inter-organisation data flows, clarifying the impact on the people involved through informal user research interviews with parents, teachers and senior clinicians, and ensuring a valid legal and ethical basis for the programme. • Currently advising on a number of existing projects and programmes, including promoting strategies for social and business statistics, prompting projects to consider the scale and impact of people changes required to address forthcoming process changes, and highlighting where projects may be affecting the same teams. • Advising on changes to the existing design governance to reflect a wider, more holistic view of design to cover business, process, data, security and technology. - **Interim Enterprise Architecture & Business Analysis Practice Lead at NHS England** (2019 – 2019) Led Strategic Design, guiding a team of architects and analysts, towards the development of an Enterprise Target State Architecture for a SIAM programme.. I was responsible for the quality of the deliverables from the practice, resourcing, allocation and advising on how the practice should contribute to the success of the programme. • Influenced the move towards away from multiple, conflicting design sign-offs to an integrated Strategic Design function. That function guided all acts of design across the programme, enabling the programme to have more consolidated roadmaps featuring defined plateaus/transition states across every domain and project and mitigated contradictory designs. • Proposed and executed a reset of a major portion of the programme (a large programme within the overall programme) to create a more stable direction and communication path for a better delivery. • Founded the Enterprise Architecture Practice and introduced the concept of Integrative Design among the practice members and to the wider team. • Led the design of the Target Operating Model and Enterprise Target State Architecture to set the vision for the programme, covering the domains of Business, Service, Technology/Apps, Data/Information and Security. • Produced a blended approach to architecture based on elements of TOGAF, APQC Process Framework, Business Motivation Models, ITIL, IT4IT and other, more local frameworks. • Defined the corporate strategy based on integrating techniques more commonly applied to startups in order to provide a focus for the programme and the resulting organisation. - **Interim Business Architect at NHS Digital** (2017 – 2019) NHS Digital/HSCIC is an organisation resulting from the merger of 3 precursor organisations. Internally, the directorates largely reflected their previous organisations. I advised on the approach to redesigning one of the main directorates of this organisation. •led the discovery phase, defined the roadmap, facilitated more detailed planning and led on the design of the business model. •advised and helped prepare for HR issues involved in transformation •conducted discovery exercise to uncover the real state of the organisation and its aspirations •guided the portfolio change team through the development and implementation of the Target Operating Model, in conjunction with capability-led change and the data pipeline initiatives underway. •led the team to uncover existing portfolio change initiatives across and transforming how the directorate intends to achieve change. •conducted an analysis of the usage of the the existing CRM application and proposed a roadmap for change •advised other directorates and teams on their approaches to TOMs. This resulted in a client directorate that was consistently ahead of the other directorates in terms of transformation expectations and ability to deliver on that transformation. This allowed the directorate to choose its direction based on evidence and decision-making rather than fall into a path based on responding budget cuts. - **Interim Business Architect at Anglian Water Services** (2016 – 2017) On arrival, I found the Service Improvement Programme expending significant effort solving small, isolated issues. I refocussed the Programme to increase the client’s rankings in the quarterly Service Improvement Mechanism (SIM) tables. I influenced multiple stakeholders to attempt larger changes by redirecting the programme away from smaller improvements to larger opportunities that featured across the organisation, based on introducing customer journeys. • Much of the Service Improvement Programme concerned changing culture and behaviour in combination with the process and customer journey changes. • I mentored and guided the business analysts and implementation managers, in regular one-to-one sessions as well as group training on methods that they were to find beneficial in the programme and in their own career development. • I managed the Business Design Authority, created in order to allow a wide range of stakeholders a view of forthcoming designs. I also introduced more rigour into the programme through better governance and planning. • I suggested that the client focus on pragmatic changes (those capable of being implemented with the existing systems in place) and create a catalogue of aspirational changes (those requiring larger technology changes. This resulted in the client achieving 1st position in the SIM ranking tables for customer service from OFWAT in my final week with them. The client also had the start of a customer-focussed, technology-enabled roadmap for a longer-term transformation programme. - **Interim Project Manager - Customer Journey at London Borough of Waltham Forest** (2016 – 2016) LBWF is one of the most challenged boroughs in the country, with significant social care pressures from issues of deprivation. Adult Social Care was in need of a large transformation to response to changing needs. I managed Adult Social Care’s Customer Journey, covering many diverse work-streams, timescales and multiple partnering organisations. I created a plan and vision for the way forwards, using a programme approach due to the number of loosely-related deliverables, dependencies on partners across domains, e.g. Childrens and Families, housing, corporate contact centres, finance, Clinical Commissioning Groups, GPs and acute foundation trusts, 3rd sector and other local authorities. As the project manager, I ensured the timely and accurate delivery of ICT, process changes and organisational/team structure changes. I steered the project activities towards achieving service stabilisation across numerous services, while initiating long-term, parallel activities for transformation. Much of the service stabilisation was focussed on developing a common perspective of the current state of the service and previous changes. The parallel transformation streams were able to accept wider scope, including introduction of digital solutions, channel shift, rationalisation of ICT systems and redefining service team structures. I managed the HR restructures on behalf of Adult Social Care, crossing into Childrens and Families where joint services were being created. This resulted in the client having a monitored set of activities for short-term stabilisation in order to provide a steadier transformation the longer-term transformation. The client received plans and associated collateral for the more complete transformation agenda, including the execution of the first phase (initial restructure) and the initiation of the second phase (second restructure and technology adoption). - **CEO at Besteno** (2014 – 2015) Besteno was a start-up designed to help people find the best of everything. Besteno had a positive perspective on reviews, allowing you to share questions with friends and see which friends had answered. It was industry-agnostic, subject-agnostic and handled local and global questions. Besteno is now in hiatus, while we look at less computational-expensive solutions. It proved the business model works and that it can generate revenue. At its peak, Besteno had 37 million pages covering content in every country of the world and across many different subjects. Throughout its short-lived life and just before its retirement, Besteno ranked on Google's first page for a number of hyperlocal searches. - **Business Architect at Sheffield City Council** (2010 – 2013) SCC was undergoing significant budgetary cuts as a result of reduced funding to local authorities. I was the Business Architect for the Communities portfolio, concentrating mainly on adult social care. I contributed to business cases and followed them through implementation. • Designed & initiated a programme (costing £2m+) to make worker-led changes and introduce new technologies, covering 300+ assessors, 1000+ care workers and improving the service for 10,000+ service users. • Introduced new methods & tools in a manner appropriate for the authority, increasing acceptability by social workers, occupational therapists, care managers and their managers. This programme covered service improvement and implementation of supporting technologies such as EDRMS (Electronic Document and Records Management), Fax Gateways and mobile working with new tablets and slates. •I advised on potential changes to social care model and interpretation of personalisation into the business operation, from proposing new ways of working and associated processes to analysing proposals regardless whether suggested by me or by others. • I brought a stalled 4-and-a-half year old EDRMS implementation round to deliver within 6 months of leading it part-time. • I mentored other team members in analytical techniques (e.g facilitation, lean, prototyping, influencing, lean startup). The programme was successful; resulting in significant benefits by enabling social workers & care managers to move from completing 1 assessment in 6 months to a situation where the same employees were averaging 1.5 assessments per week. By the end of the programme, we had a 200+ laptops/tablets in use by social workers for use during assessment visits where they were able to hand-write notes on the screen, ready to sync next time they were in range of a data signal. The overall result was a reduction in the death rate for that city, and an improvement in the quality of service/care provided. - **Consultant at Manchester City Council** (2010 – 2010) I was contracted for redesigning the operational service for a partnership between the Directorate for Adults and the local NHS Primary Care Trust. The project was a mixture of BPR and ICT activity. The majority of the effort was in influencing the diverse stakeholders to overcome reluctance to change within a complex governance structure with less effort expended on formal, structure business analysis. Implementing Streamlined Assessment Process for Directorate for Adults. Implementing BPR activities on Equipment and Adaptations, Reablement and community social work teams. Designed overall implementation plan and specific approach for delivering change to the organisation. I ran workshops bringing prior work into a more acceptable and comprehensible state and produced a project plan for the following 18-24 months. I introduced the concept of continuous improvement by including review stages following each pilot. I initiated the development of the Target Operating Model for the assessment service and validating the future model against the current service. - **Consultant at Cheshire County Council** (2005 – 2007) I acted as the lead BA for the council's Customer Access Strategy. I was responsible for assessing the procured CRM system, performing gap analysis and ensuring smooth implementation of the application into the fledgling contact centre. Throughout, I was liaising with business users, sponsors, ICT department and partner authorities since this was a multi-authority implementation. As well as handling strategic issues, I also stepped into improve technical deployment issues, e.g. introducing enterprise-level working practices to achieve a smoother and more controlled transition. I was involved in the authority-wide transformation programme, guiding a small team of BAs towards delivery. I facilitated regular sessions with staff from diverse council services and brought in suppliers so that the council could better understand what CRM could mean to its way of working. The strategy resulted in a large procurement process for which I evaluated the tendered proposals and liaised with other streams within the procurement. I worked with a new BPR team to help them understand what was required of ASIS documentation during the early stages of PDCA/Lean methodology and how we could progress To-Be ideas from the design and plan phases through to implementation across ICT, facilities, HR, etc. Along the way, I assessed the impact on the customer access strategy of other changes within the council, e.g. the roll-out of IP telephony, use of Business Objects/Crystal for enterprise reporting, updated DPA policies, FOI regulations, authentication and verification of customers and partners, introduction of corporate workflow, records and document management systems and other information management and governance strategies. - **CRM Consultant at Vertex Data Science** (2000 – 2004) Specialised in modern interactive technologies used for automating customer interactions. Vertex was a Business Process Outsourcer managing the processes of many clients hence I worked across sectors for many clients. The roles varied from implementation, consultancy/advice or as bid support on behalf of Vertex, often for early adopters of new technologies (e.g. automated email handling, speech recognition or multi-tenancy CRM solutions). • Set-up the Speech Recognition capability within Vertex, acting as Business Analyst, Technical Architect/Design Authority, Systems Analyst, & Dialogue Designer for VoiceXML solutions. Following the conception of the strategy, I defined the types of partners & target architecture that the company needed to achieve. I provided the high-level business & technical solutions to fulfil the needs of several clients, preparing for dialogue design, ‘wizard of Oz’ tests and liaising with software providers, implementing across utilities, retail, entertainment and public sector • Business/Implementation analyst rolling out a revamp of the company intranet to ~10k users across multiple locations with unknown technologies and supplier management. • Technical lead for developing & productising the corporate eCRM solution. Largely a Business Analyst role, facilitating workshops to bring out the requirements & suggesting methods for realising the requirements. • Business Analyst for an integrated front-office solution for the corporate model office. Involved the definition of scope, use cases & high-level functional specification as well as the overall design for EAI message sequences for an online retailer. • Technical Lead for solution to offshore significant percentage of a client’s activities. Involved transmission of data using Citrix & voice from UK to Asia with CTI to link the two streams at the destination. Speech recognition & resilient facilities were provided in the UK. • Implementation Manager for £340m central government programme. - **CRM Consultant at Cap Gemini** (1998 – 2000) I implemented several CRM applications into contact-centres as a Business Analyst, liaising with the client for requirements and with external suppliers for functionality and capability. • I was the lead analyst for a £70m contact-centre software implementation. I transformed the process analysis programme into a more rigid and robust solution that catered for wider aspects of business analysis. To do this, I worked closely with Technical Architects to develop a methodology that could handle the client’s needs and the enable the programme team to deliver safely. • On several projects, for large telcos, I was a principal Business Analyst implementing the Clarify eFrontOffice suite. I was responsible for capturing the business requirements and translating them into valid deliverables, ensuring that the client received what they required. • Worked on several recovery projects, where the project delivery had been in jeopardy, working with an aim to resolve issues and bring about delivery to time, often in difficult environments. - **Consultant at AG Solutions** (1996 – 1998) AGS was a joint venture between Amdahl (Fujitsu) and British Gas (Centrica). • Numerous roles including Software Methodologist, merging Fujitsu’s Macroscope methodology with Oracle Designer application framework. Assisted several projects with designing the method that would be used in each project. • I created the solution for the company’s Y2K service that it used to manage and resolve the impact of 2-digit year variables. • I co-ordinated the 1 year detailed business plan and the 5-year forecast between the senior managers and directors who were providing input to the plans and those responsible for its validation. I built models to correlate staffing levels and contract types (permanent, temporary, etc) against forecasted sales figures. ## Skills - Presales - TOGAF - Team Facilitation - Strategic Planning - Business Analysis - Cloud Computing - Change Management - Digital Transformation - Leadership - Business Strategy - Management Consulting - Strategy - Data Analysis - Utilities - Thought Leadership - Business Process Re-engineering - Performance Improvement - Target Operating Model Development - Software Development - Logical Data Modeling - Governance - Data Modeling - Social Entrepreneurship - Organizational Design - Rapid Process Improvement - Business Planning - Architecture Governance - business capability modelling - IT Strategic Planning - Technology Enabled Business Transformation - Healthcare - Customer Journeys - Change Initiatives - Change Programmes - Data Architecture - Architecture - Cloud Applications - Program Facilitation - Methodology - Program Management - Business Architecture - Team Leadership - Enterprise Architecture - Lean Startup - Iterative Methodologies - Local Government - Software Development Methodologies - Programme Design - Start-up Consulting - Cloud Migration - Public Sector - Business Transformation - Workshop Facilitation - IT Strategy - Software as a Service (SaaS) - Strategic Thinking - Data Strategies - Business Process Improvement - Consulting - CRM - Digital Strategy - Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - Stakeholder Management - Stakeholder Engagement - Lean Operations - Training Programme Design - Lean Transformation - Lean Thinking - Strategy Implementation - Communication ## Projects - **Guest lecturer for Customer Information Management at Manchester Metropolitan University.** Presenting the historical context with legal and technological issues - **Running With Knickers on Your Head** — https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/NUD00poKpah3Kz Introducing the story of applying Lean Startup concepts to a large local authority. - **The Value of your Support Network** — https://www.slideshare.net/AlanWard2/great-preneursfoundersassembly0-2?ref= Prompting startup founders to question the value of their network and to shape it to what they need individually and collectively. - **French Philosophers’ Guide through Business Architecture** — https://www.slideshare.net/AlanWard2/a-french-philosophers-guide-through-business-architecture? Introducing the concepts of Business Architecture by using quotes from French Philosophers. Presented at Lean Agile Stockport #leanagilestockport - **Architecture and The Word No** — https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/architecture-word-alan-ward/ A quick presentation to describe the purpose of Enterprise Architecture and to engage the audience (the rest of the programme) with my approach to it. ## Publications - Some more experiments in bilingual text alignment — NeMLaP-2: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on New Methods in Language Processing (https://linguistlist.org/issues/7/7-913.html) ## Other profiles - linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/a1anward