Contact Energy’s head of planning and delivery Madeleine Richardson is the inaugural winner of the Next CIO award, launched as part of the CIO50 2022.

Over the last few years Richardson has taken the ICT planning and delivery function from a small-scale BAU focused delivery team ($5-6m Capex per annum), predominantly supporting one business unit, to a large-scale enterprise-wide transformation delivery function ($30m+ Capex), whilst playing a key role in the ICT leadership team as the team transitioned from sitting within the retail business unit back to a full enterprise-wide function. 

“The catalyst for change and rapid growth was the Contact26 strategy,” says Iain Gauld, chief information officer at Contact Energy who nominated Richardson for this award. “This strategy, and shift in business direction (into growth mode), has resulted in a significant increase in demand for ICT services and support as the business rapidly expands. To adapt to this rapid increase in demand, Madeleine has applied her strong leadership and creative thinking to introduce and lead a number of innovations in the delivery space. This has allowed the delivery function to scale quickly and deliver value to the business faster than ever.”

The key innovations Richardson has led and introduced in the delivery space are: 

• Mixed-model teams and value streams: Using new frameworks (e.g., iterative design and delivery models), coaching and training to adapt traditional waterfall and large-scale platform teams, into cross-functional, mixed-model business delivery squads whilst still retaining some waterfall disciplines for more  traditional projects that best suit that methodology (e.g. technical  upgrades). “Recognising that there is a need to evolve the delivery teams even further, Madeleine has also embarked on transitioning all ICT delivery teams towards working in business-aligned value streams,” says Gauld.  “The value streams will further enable value faster, increase ability to innovate and decrease the amount of context switching, and increase satisfaction of delivery team members when running multiple projects in parallel.”
• Collaborative vendor eco-system: Establishing a new multi-vendor, cross capability partner network to  support flexible business demand, much faster than in-house models. This has been critical to delivering a number of high value, strategic  programmes such as an S/4Hana SAP Upgrade and implementation of the retail data platform, according to Gauld.
• Self-improving team: The introduction of a new online tool (Squadify) allows teams to assess,  track and develop their team and taskwork to drive optimal outcomes and performance. It has also proven to be an effective tool to aide project recovery, where sub-optimal performance has placed achieving benefits at risk.
• Rapid Triage process: Leaning on emergency medicine best practice, a rapid inhouse triage  process has been established to deal with the many ad-hoc business requests which were overwhelming delivery teams and disappointing business stakeholders. The process uses strategic prioritisation and technical reviews to rapidly identify, assess, and prioritise the ad-hoc work to optimise delivery flow whilst keeping business stakeholders involved all the way

The evolved ways of working and innovations made over the last two years have resulted in significant value to the business, including: 

• Completion of major data transformation projects using cloud, analytics, and modern BI tools to deliver a simplified data tooling, enable faster creation of value and improve data driven decisions. Business benefits include over $1.2m embedded value, 50% improvement in perceived ease of access and up to 50% faster time to insights. 
• Significant improvements to ways of working on Generation sites, including a networks modernisation programme that delivered upgraded SD-Wan and WiFi networks. The improved networks resulted in engineers being able to share information digitally, rather than having to drive between sites to share hard-copies, and better security across all networks.
• Delivery of a range of cyber security measures aimed at mitigating Contact’s risk exposure, including rolling out Mobile Application Management security upgrades to all mobile devices that gain access to Contact data. 

“A key part of Madeleine’s role is her ability to collaborate, negotiate and most importantly influence the outcomes that mean ICT can deliver the best possible end-user experience, whilst maintaining a safe, stable, fit for purpose technology landscape that caters to the strategic needs of the business,” says Gauld.  “Madeleine acted in the role of CIO for one month, whilst I was on leave. She successfully navigated the challenge of stepping up and actively participating at C-suite level, providing meaningful contributions in all LT planning sessions, including influencing the approach and positioning of a ~$300m investment paper for the board, for the build of a new generation site, to ensure technology and digital were included in the pitch.”