What is the T2S programme plan?

On 17 July 2008 the Governing Council of the ECB decided to launch the T2S programme and to provide the required resources until its completion. While the Governing Council further decided to assign the development and future operation of the system to the 4CB, the Eurosystem has a responsibility to the market to ensure the timely completion of all activities that form part of the T2S programme.

The T2S programme includes numerous activities, organised in “workstreams” , such as legal arrangements, support for T2S actors (e.g. training), acceptance and user testing, migration, the framework for operating the T2S system during the testing and migration phase and live operations, the user connectivity framework, information security and a sound governance framework. Attention is also given to activities related to the addition of non-euro area currencies to T2S. An important aspect relates to financing and pricing, which includes the calculation of the “total cost of ownership” (consisting of the initial investment cost and the operational costs for the first six years of operation), and the preparation of a pricing scheme that enables the full recovery of the costs borne by the 4CB and ECB from the market.

The programme plan aims to provide T2S actors with a synthetic view on the project.

The programme plan aims to consolidate all activities necessary for the completion of the programme, irrespective of whether they are the responsibility of the 4CB or the ECB. Its main objective is to provide the T2S Programme Manager, the T2S Programme Board, the ECB’s decision-making bodies and T2S actors with a synthetic view on how the project is structured, highlighting the deliverables (especially those that are of key importance for the CSDs, the central banks and the users) and emphasising the main dependencies – internal or external – within the programme and between the various actors. Consequently, the plan does not intend to exhaustively list every single detail relating to these activities; these are included in separate plans prepared by the 4CB or managed by the relevant ECB team.

During the summer period, the ECB and 4CB project teams developed a first draft of the programme plan by integrating the main activities contained in the 4CB’s internal plan with the main elements from the detailed plans made by the different ECB workstreams. This first draft was then presented to the Advisory Group in September 2009.

As with any project plan, the work on the T2S programme plan is a dynamic activity.

Now that this first plan has been established , it must be agreed with the T2S actors to ensure that the deliverables they will receive correspond to their expectations and will be available on time in view of their own developments. Once established, the regular external reporting will focus on these deliverables.

As with any project plan, the work on the T2S programme plan is a dynamic activity, since it requires regular reviews by the various actors and frequent updates. The plan is also likely to evolve during the project lifecycle, as some generic tasks planned for well ahead in the future (e.g. two to three years from now) will be clarified in more detail as they approach.

The programme plan is an indispensable tool for ensuring the success of T2S.

To monitor the plan, regular project status meetings are organised with the activity coordinators. During these meetings, completed, ongoing and upcoming tasks are reviewed and any necessary changes in timing and organisation are then reflected in the programme plan. During these review meetings, existing and potential threats for the successful completion of activities are assessed, and, where necessary, (immediate) risk mitigation actions are proposed. The plan is managed in cooperation with the 4CB.

The detailed programme plan is progressively formalising the dependencies between various activities so that the impact of delays in one activity can be assessed against the entire plan. As such, the plan includes details on the extent to which a delay in completing one activity could have an impact on the timely completion of other activities/deliverables, or – if the tasks are on the “critical path” – on the go-live date of the T2S programme.

The T2S programme plan will provide the programme management with a sufficient amount of information on all major activities in the T2S programme to identify difficulties, decide upon project risk mitigation actions and keep the programme on track. The programme plan is therefore an indispensable tool for ensuring the success of T2S.