ASX has published its special report reviewing the organisation’s portfolio, programme and project management frameworks. This is the last of three reports responding to ASIC’s February 2023 notice to the exchange.
Included in the report was a maturity assessment, conducted independently by PM-Partners, benchmarking ASX against internationally recognised standards.
The assessment concluded that the exchange has applied dedicated resources to improve processes, frameworks, people and capabilities over the past two years, and commended its “strong foundations” and “capable people”.
However, PM-Partners noted six key areas of improvement for the exchange and made 32 recommendations to help ASX reduce change risk exposure.
While 12 of these are either already underway or will be implemented in the current delivery uplift roadmap, the remainder will be implemented by ASX moving forwards.
The report also states that ASX must further develop its programme management frameworks and capability, a finding in line with the organisation’s history of delivering change mainly through projects.
ASX’s delivery roadmap aims to develop a common approach to programme delivery, with design expected to be completed by the end of 2023 and implemented by the end of June 2024.
The report was delivered to ASIC on 29 September 2023. After independent auditing, EY concluded that ASX had “fully addressed” 15 of the matters specified in ASIC’s 2023 notice and “partially addressed” a further three.
EY made three recommendations to ASX, including the development of a programme management framework, additional detailed planning, effort estimations and integrated resource views for certain medium- to long-term items on the Delivery Roadmap. All of these will be implemented by the exchange.
Helen Lofthouse, director and CEO of ASX, says: “ASX has been very focused on improving its project delivery capability over the last two years and today’s report underscores the progress we’ve made, and demonstrates how we will expand the delivery roadmap to incorporate the new recommendations to further strengthen our approach.
“Many of the recommendations from PM-Partners are already in operation in the CHESS replacement project as this review builds on the work ASX has been doing to implement the 45 recommendations from the external review on CHESS replacement from last November.”
