By Adrian Moise, CEO of Aequilibrium
In Brief: Speed to Market and Delivery Excellence - Top 10 Best Practices
- Start fast, finish strong: Delays in Forge migration create costly scope creep, rework, and loss of competitive edge — speed is strategy.
- Execution discipline is critical: Success depends on clear scope, product ownership, and consistent, agile teams — not vendor features alone.
- AEQ’s Four Lenses ensure balance: Strategy, Experience, Technology, and Governance must align to avoid overruns and deliver business value.
- Follow the 10 best practices From MVP focus to agile governance, the article outlines proven delivery tactics from Forge, Veripark, and Temenos projects.
Insights on Migration from Canadian CU Leaders
“The push from exploring to committing came down to timing and confidence. We had been evaluating for some time, but once we saw the gaps and limitations with Forge, and what Temenos could deliver, we moved forward.”
– Lloyd Smith, CEO First Ontario CU
“Getting to the new platform as quickly as possible is key for us. Scope needs to be constrained to start, but make sure we have the opportunities to do great things in the future as well. What would I do differently? Find a way to go faster — contracts, legal departments, those can slow you down. Make sure they’re ready.”
– Darrell Jaggers, CIO First West CU
“Some things that were top of mind for us in the evaluation were an ability to customize, an ability to get a new, modern user experience, an ability to integrate into a modern API architecture. And probably the most important thing for us was looking at and making sure that we had the ability to control our own destiny. So looking at governance and structure around digital banking platform — we didn’t want to be held back.”
– Darrell Jaggers, CIO First West CU
About the Forge Thought Leadership Series
This article on Speed and Delivery Excellence builds on Aequilibrium’s (AEQ) ongoing Forge Thought Leadership Series, where we help Canadian credit unions navigate Forge sunset and prepare for the next decade of digital member experiences:
- Digital Experience Starts at the Edge – Why your website, CMS, CRM, and analytics matter just as much as your DBP. Migration isn’t a dishwasher swap; it’s a kitchen upgrade.
- Future-Proofing, Not Parity: Why Your Migration Plan Needs to Start Now – Don’t wait for 2026. Start early, align your board, and aim for parity-plus to futureproof your strategy.
- Forge Migration Reality Check – A candid look at the vendor landscape (Veripark, Intellect, Temenos, Plumery) and what CIOs must consider across stack alignment, cloud, and integration.
- Forge Sunset Mid-Year Update – Why Forge sunset isn’t just a DBP decision, but a chance to build a scalable, composable, AI-ready foundation.
Now, in this new article, Speed and Delivery Excellence, we turn to the most critical execution challenge:
How to avoid delays and overruns
How to align business, UX, tech, and governance
And how to accelerate time-to-market while still delivering a modern, differentiated member experience
Together, these articles form a strategic roadmap: from rethinking the edge to defining parity-plus, navigating the vendor reality, and now executing with speed and discipline.
Introduction
Complex digital banking transformations and platform upgrades have a well-earned reputation for taking longer and costing more than anticipated.
I started this article by relaying some insights that Lloyd and Darrell emphasized in our webinar where they, alongside Canadian credit union executives from Sunshine Coast Credit Union and SASCU, shared candid insights into their unique migration off the Forge platform.
One of the key takeaways they expressed?
“It was that migration, timing, confidence, and execution discipline are the difference between being stuck in evaluation limbo and actually transforming member experience.”
Central1’s Forge journey illustrates the former – a saga of delivery pitfalls:
- an initial build on top of an older Backbase 5.x platform, replacing the out-of-the-box front-end widgets with a built-from-scratch Central1 presentation layer,
- a restart with Backbase 6.1 using DBS, microservices, and user journeys, then
- a shift away from Backbase entirely to deliver Forge 2.0, leveraging their legacy MemberDirect platform and OpenText Content Management System for the public website.
VeriPark also experienced early learnings in Canada
- beginning with Innovation CU several years ago on an older version of their platform, VeriChannel 7.x
- before launching Beem more recently on a more modern (micro-services) v8.1 platform
- now VeriPark is moving forward with the Canadianized coalition platform led by First West CU on their latest v8.2 platform
Similarly, Temenos
- began its Canadian digital banking journey with BlueShore as an early champion, following the acquisition and integration of Kony’s low-code platform and digital banking applications. That program encountered delays, and
- with Blueshore’s subsequent intention to merge with Coastal Community Credit Union in early 2024, then the actual merger of BlueShore with Beem in January 2025, the original launch of the Temenos Digital Platform for BlueShore was delayed several times, and eventually cancelled
- Today, First Ontario CU is carrying the torch forward to launch the first Canadianized Temenos Digital implementation.
Each of these stories highlights the challenges of delivering these complex transformations on time and on budget — and why discipline in execution is crucial.
So, why do projects overrun? The culprits are familiar: scope creep, lack of governance, vendor misalignment, and rushed technical decisions that later balloon into rework and technical debt.
The good news: these risks can be anticipated and mitigated.
In this article, we outline the Top 10 Best Practices for Delivery Excellence — lessons learned from Forge, the new Veripark coalition, and AEQ’s own real-world credit union transformations.
These practices help:
- maximize business value,
- accelerate delivery to market,
- and reduce risk, rework, and cost
The AEQ Four Lenses Framework
At Aequilibrium, we use our proprietary Four Lenses framework to help credit unions approach Forge migration and digital transformation with clarity and balance. Too often, projects focus narrowly on technology or vendor features. The Four Lenses ensure you don’t just implement a platform—you deliver a strategy that aligns with your members, your board, and your future.
1. Strategy & Business
Forge migration isn’t just an IT program; it’s a business transformation.
Executive and Board Alignment: Define goals, objectives, and meaningful KPIs from the outset.
Agility as a Priority: Build the capacity to adapt quickly to fast-changing member expectations and uncertain economic conditions.
Value Creation: Use the migration as an opportunity to create new sources of differentiation, growth, and operational efficiency.
2. Experience Design
Credit unions are in the business of member empathy. Experience is the product.
Human-Centered Journeys: Redesign digital touchpoints around real member needs.
Parity Plus Experience: Deliver not only feature parity, but also upgraded, modern, mobile-first UX that builds loyalty and attracts new members.
Brand Differentiation: Ensure your digital channels accurately reflect your credit union’s identity, not a vendor’s default template.
3. Technology Enablement
Technology is the enabler—not the end goal.
Resilience & Scalability: Architect for growth and high availability.
Modularity: Use APIs, microservices, and cloud-native patterns to decouple systems.
Readiness for Open Banking & AI: Ensure your stack can integrate seamlessly with emerging standards and next-gen services.
4. Delivery & Governance
This is where most projects rise or fall—and the core focus of this article.
Agile Discipline: Avoid “Agilefall” by ensuring iterative delivery with measurable velocity.
Governance: Give your board and executive team transparency into progress, risks, and trade-offs.
Consistency & Capacity: Protect your delivery team from churn, ensure access to the right expertise, and establish meaningful project metrics.
In this article, we focus on the Delivery & Governance lens—the practices that accelerate time-to-market while reducing risk and rework. But true delivery excellence can only be achieved when all Four Lenses are in play, aligned, and reinforcing one another.
Top 10 Best Practices for Delivery Excellence
The lessons from Forge, VeriPark, and Temenos earlier initiatives show us that, with the right practices in place, credit unions can move faster, deliver better, and reduce risk — all while staying true to their mission of serving members.
Four Lenses: Strategy and Business
1. Anchor to Business Success
Failure Point:
Overemphasis on tech, underemphasis on business goals.
Practice:
Align every sprint and deliverable with resilience, differentiation, growth, and efficiency.
Example:
Start with an MVP (Phase 1) — get the basics right quickly. Push features that differentiate to Phase 2. This reduces scope creep and assumptions that derail delivery.
2. Establish Strong Product Management
Failure Point:
Projects drift without a voice balancing vendor, internal teams, and business goals.
Practice:
Appoint a seasoned Product Manager and choose an implementation partner who can drive outcomes. Balance out-of-the-box (OOB) vs. configuration vs. custom extensions with a clear “parity plus” vision.
Four Lenses: Experience Design
3. Design for User Experience (Experience IS the Product)
Failure Point:
Defaulting to bland, wireframe customer journeys.
Practice:
Strike a balance between OOB journeys and brand differentiation. Work with partners who understand the DBP’s design system.
Example:
AEQ’s UX design for DUCA CU — award-winning, business goals exceeded. See case study →
Four Lenses: Technology
4. Manage Technical Debt
Failure Point:
In the rush to deliver, corners get cut, code is duplicated, or short-term fixes create long-term pain.
Practice:
Define clear coding standards and code review practices. Ensure a solution architect is in place to prevent ad hoc dev decisions.
5. Plan for Upgrades Early
Failure Point:
Customizations that break with every DBP upgrade (2–3 times a year).
Practice:
Be mindful of OOB vs. extension trade-offs. Over-customization today can turn into months of upgrade rework later.
Four Lenses: Delivery and Governance
6. Guardrails Against Scope Creep
Failure Point:
“Kid in the candy store” syndrome with new platforms.
Practice:
Enforce MVP discipline. Get across the river first; then enhance.
7. Agile, Not Agilefall (Lens: Delivery and Governance)
Failure Point:
Waterfall projects disguised as “agile sprints.”
Practice:
Right-size teams. Use an Agile Coach. Conduct regular retrospectives (Start/Stop/Continue). Avoid oversized “squads” of 20+ that dilute accountability.
8. Consistent Teams, Not Resource Swaps
Failure Point:
Vendors swap experienced local resources for cheaper offshore teams midstream.
Practice:
Demand team consistency. Factor in the 30–60 days it takes for new devs to ramp up before agreeing to substitutions.
9. Measure, Recalibrate, Repeat
Failure Point:
Teams stick to outdated initial estimates.
Practice:
Recalculate backlog vs. velocity quarterly.
Example:
If your backlog grows from 500 → 800 story points and velocity drops from 50 → 40, delivery doubles from 10 sprints to 20. Address reality early, not late.
10. Elevate Governance Beyond IT
Failure Point:
Governance limited to project management, missing executive alignment.
Practice:
Governance must span strategy, experience, technology, and delivery (the Four Lenses). This ensures speed and excellence without compromising resilience or member experience.
Ready to Deliver on These 10 Best Practices?
Let’s start with a strategy session
Schedule a 30-minute call with our experts to discuss how you can accelerate delivery, reduce risk, and build a future-ready digital foundation.
