Nicholas Glassborow
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Delivery Lead | Project & Programme Manager
Complex cross-functional change across product, data, and operations
Available for senior delivery, programme leadership, and transformation roles
(permanent or contract)
Case Studies
Programme Stabilisation & Complex Delivery
Revenue Platform Stabilisation during Third-Party Network Change at Sliide
Led the stabilisation of a revenue-critical platform during a period of third-party network change, protecting commercial performance while coordinating cross-functional teams to diagnose issues and restore confidence.
Revenue Platform Stabilisation during Third-Party Network Change
The context
This programme was delivered within a digital product business operating revenue-generating platforms that depended on multiple third-party advertising and monetisation partners. Revenue performance was tightly coupled to external systems, partner behaviour, and live platform configuration, creating inherent delivery and commercial risk.
During a period of change within one of the organisation’s core monetisation networks, the platform experienced volatility in performance and reporting, requiring rapid intervention to protect revenue and restore stability.
The problem
Following changes in third-party network behaviour and configuration, the business began to see material and sustained drops in revenue performance across key products. The causes were not immediately clear and spanned technical configuration, partner behaviour, reporting discrepancies, and platform rollout decisions.
The issue cut across Product, Engineering, Revenue Operations, and external partners. Without coordinated ownership, there was a risk of fragmented investigations, slow decision-making, and continued revenue erosion.
The challenge was to stabilise performance quickly while maintaining a structured, evidence-based approach to diagnosis and recovery.
Why it mattered
The affected platforms represented a significant portion of the organisation’s recurring revenue. Prolonged instability risked material financial impact, damaged partner relationships, and loss of confidence at senior leadership level.
At the same time, knee-jerk fixes or uncontrolled rollbacks risked masking root causes or introducing new issues. The business needed a controlled response that balanced urgency with discipline.
My role
I was asked to coordinate the response and stabilisation effort across teams. My role focused on creating structure around what had become a highly reactive situation.
This included establishing a clear investigation framework, coordinating cross-functional working sessions, tracking hypotheses and findings, and acting as the central point of communication between technical teams, commercial stakeholders, and senior leadership.
I owned the action plan, facilitated regular update sessions, and ensured that decisions were documented, prioritised, and aligned to commercial impact.
What changed
I introduced a structured “stabilisation” approach rather than treating the issue as a single defect or isolated incident. This included:
- Breaking the problem down into distinct workstreams (configuration, partner behaviour, rollout impact, reporting variance)
- Creating a shared evidence base to distinguish signal from noise
- Establishing a clear decision log to avoid circular discussions
- Agreeing controlled next steps, including targeted testing rather than broad, high-risk changes
This approach allowed teams to move from reactive firefighting to deliberate diagnosis, while keeping leadership informed with clear, concise updates rather than raw technical detail.
Result / impact
The stabilisation effort restored confidence in the platform and created a clear path toward performance recovery. Revenue volatility was brought under control, contributing factors were isolated, and longer-term remediation activity was defined and owned.
Just as importantly, the programme introduced a repeatable model for handling future revenue-critical incidents involving third-party dependencies — balancing speed, governance, and commercial awareness.
Strengthening Business Continuity at The Family Building Society
Designed and implemented a comprehensive business continuity framework in response to increased regulatory scrutiny, improving organisational readiness, audit confidence, and operational resilience.
Strengthening business continuity in a regulated financial services environment
The problem
Business continuity arrangements were not sufficiently robust to meet evolving regulatory expectations or withstand increased audit scrutiny. Existing documentation and processes lacked consistency, testability, and clear ownership, creating operational and compliance risk.
Why it mattered
As a regulated financial institution, deficiencies in business continuity planning represented a material risk to operational resilience, audit outcomes, and organisational credibility in the event of disruption.
My role
I was responsible for establishing a comprehensive business continuity framework, working across the organisation and acting as the primary interface with audit stakeholders. This included defining scope, ownership, and governance, and ensuring the resulting framework was practical and defensible.
What changed
I designed and implemented a structured business continuity framework supported by clear documentation, defined processes, and scheduled testing. Internal validation exercises were introduced to identify gaps and strengthen readiness, and an emergency communication system was implemented to enable rapid staff communication during incidents.
Result / impact
The framework was successfully reviewed by external auditors, with no material findings, and provided the organisation with a clear, testable approach to business continuity. Operational readiness improved, audit confidence increased, and ongoing ownership was transitioned into the business with appropriate governance in place.
Enhancing Operational Resilience at The Family Building Society
Led the establishment of an operational resilience approach aligned to emerging regulatory expectations, translating guidance into practical governance and delivery across critical business services.
Establishing operational resilience in response to new regulatory expectations
The problem
New regulatory guidance from the Bank of England, PRA, and FCA placed increased scrutiny on the organisation’s operational resilience arrangements. Existing processes were fragmented, paper-based, and insufficiently aligned to emerging expectations, creating regulatory and operational risk.
Why it mattered
As a regulated financial institution, failure to demonstrate effective operational resilience could have resulted in adverse audit outcomes, regulatory challenge, and reduced confidence in the organisation’s ability to maintain critical services during disruption.
My role
I was responsible for leading the design and implementation of an operational resilience framework, working closely with executive stakeholders and coordinating activity across business and operational functions. This included translating regulatory expectations into practical, deliverable changes.
What changed
I established a structured operational resilience approach focused on identifying critical business services, modernising legacy processes, and introducing clear ownership and governance. Cross-functional collaboration was formalised to ensure consistency, and changes were embedded in a way that supported both regulatory compliance and day-to-day operations.
Result / impact
The organisation successfully strengthened its operational resilience posture, passed external audit scrutiny, and was better prepared to maintain critical services during periods of disruption, including the operational challenges presented during COVID-19.
Secure Card Payment Solution at The Family Building Society
Delivered a PCI-compliant card payment capability, reducing operational risk and replacing fragmented manual processes with a secure, scalable solution adopted across multiple teams.
Delivering a PCI-compliant card payment capability in a regulated environment
The problem
The organisation needed a secure, PCI-compliant way to process card payments for clients and brokers. Existing processes were manual, fragmented, and created operational and compliance risk, particularly in a regulated financial services context.
Why it mattered
Handling card payments without a robust, compliant solution exposed the organisation to security risk, audit findings, and operational inefficiency. Any solution needed to meet strict PCI requirements while remaining practical for internal teams and external users.
My role
I was responsible for leading the delivery of a secure card payment capability, coordinating internal stakeholders, third-party payment providers, and development partners, and ensuring compliance requirements were met without over-engineering the solution.
What changed
I led the implementation of a PCI-compliant payment approach using a trusted third-party provider, establishing clear ownership, secure workflows, and supporting processes. The solution simplified payment handling, improved traceability, and was designed to be extensible beyond its initial use case.
Result / impact
The organisation successfully introduced a secure, compliant card payment capability, reducing operational risk and improving efficiency. The solution was subsequently adopted by additional teams, extending its value beyond the original scope and embedding a safer, more scalable approach to payment processing.
Seamless Onboarding of Melbourne Office at RM - Empowering Global Connectivity
Integrated a remote international office into a centralised IT and support model, improving security, operational consistency, and executive visibility across a global estate.
Integrating a remote office into a centralised global IT support model
The problem
RM needed to integrate its Melbourne office into a centralised IT and support framework. The office had historically operated separately, creating inconsistency in support, security exposure, and operational risk across the wider organisation.
Why it mattered
Operating a remote office outside central governance increased cybersecurity risk, complicated vendor management, and reduced visibility for senior leadership. The integration needed to meet RM’s security standards while maintaining continuity for local teams.
My role
I was responsible for leading the integration of the Melbourne office into RM’s central IT support model, coordinating activity across internal IT teams, third-party suppliers, and international partners, and ensuring compliance with security and data residency requirements.
What changed
I established a structured integration plan covering infrastructure alignment, device rollout, vendor onboarding, and support model transition. Security controls were standardised, new suppliers were introduced where appropriate, and local teams were supported through the change to ensure adoption without service disruption.
Result / impact
The Melbourne office was successfully brought under RM’s centralised support and security framework, improving operational consistency, reducing risk, and providing senior leadership with clearer visibility and control across the global estate.
Digital & Platform Transformation
Data Platform Migration & Cost Rationalisation at Sliide
Delivered a structured data platform migration to modernise legacy infrastructure, reduce ongoing costs, and improve the reliability and usability of business-critical reporting.
Data Platform Migration and Cost Rationalisation in a Scaling Product Environment
The context
This programme was delivered within a digital product business transitioning from early-stage growth into a more operationally mature organisation. The platform processed large volumes of behavioural, revenue, and partner data and supported critical commercial reporting across multiple teams.
The existing data architecture had evolved organically and was increasingly misaligned with the organisation’s wider cloud infrastructure, creating cost inefficiencies, operational friction, and growing dependency on specialist teams.
The problem
The data platform relied on a legacy warehouse that was expensive to run, difficult to scale predictably, and poorly aligned with the organisation’s AWS-based services. Costs were rising without clear visibility, and changes to data models or reporting pipelines were slow and brittle.
At the same time, the platform supported revenue reporting, partner billing, and internal decision-making. Any disruption during migration risked incorrect reporting, loss of stakeholder confidence, and potential contractual issues with external partners.
The challenge was to modernise the data platform while maintaining business continuity, accuracy, and trust throughout the transition.
Why it mattered
Data was central to both operational and commercial decision-making. Without intervention, the platform would continue to scale inefficiently, increasing costs and limiting the organisation’s ability to evolve its analytics and reporting capabilities.
Leadership needed confidence that the data platform could support future growth, provide accurate and timely insight, and operate within a sustainable cost model — without becoming a bottleneck or a source of ongoing risk.
My role
I led the programme management and delivery oversight for the data platform migration, working across Data Engineering, CloudOps, Product, and commercial stakeholders.
My responsibilities included shaping the migration strategy, owning the delivery plan, coordinating dependencies between teams, and ensuring that day-to-day delivery activity aligned with the broader programme objectives. I facilitated regular syncs, tracked risks and decisions, and acted as the bridge between technical execution and business impact.
Where necessary, I made governance decisions to prevent new development being built on legacy platforms, avoiding duplicated effort, technical debt, and unnecessary cost.
What changed
I established a structured, phased migration approach that allowed the new platform to run in parallel with the legacy environment. This reduced delivery risk and allowed data consistency to be validated before decommissioning existing systems.
The programme focused not only on moving data, but on improving how data workloads were executed and governed. Predictable workloads were separated from ad-hoc analytical usage, allowing compute resources to be scaled more intelligently and costs to be controlled more precisely.
Alongside the technical migration, I worked with teams to improve cost visibility, reporting, and accountability. Historical assumptions around data definitions and metrics were challenged and standardised to ensure continuity of reporting and avoid misleading changes during the transition.
Result / impact
The migration delivered a more flexible, cost-effective, and operationally aligned data platform. Ongoing infrastructure costs were materially reduced, reporting performance improved, and the platform became easier to operate and evolve.
Crucially, business-critical reporting remained accurate and available throughout the transition, preserving trust with internal stakeholders and external partners. The organisation emerged with a data platform that supported growth, reduced reliance on specialist bottlenecks, and provided a stronger foundation for future analytics and decision-making.
Revolutionising Mortgage Application Processing at The Family Building Society
Recovered and delivered a previously failing online broker portal, establishing clear requirements, resetting supplier engagement, and replacing an inefficient paper-based process.
Recovering and delivering a failing online broker portal
The problem
An initiative to launch a new online broker portal had already encountered delivery issues prior to my involvement. The project lacked clear requirements, was heavily dependent on a third-party supplier, and was at risk of further delay and loss of confidence.
Why it mattered
The existing paper-based process was inefficient and created operational friction for brokers and internal teams. Continued failure to deliver the portal risked further cost, reputational impact, and missed opportunities to modernise a core business process.
My role
I was accountable for taking control of the programme, establishing clarity around requirements, and resetting delivery expectations with internal stakeholders and the external supplier. This included operating at senior level to resolve scope, ownership, and decision-making issues.
What changed
I consolidated fragmented requirements into a clear, agreed scope, introduced appropriate governance, and escalated key delivery risks where necessary to enable timely decisions. Supplier engagement was reset, and delivery was refocused on what was essential to achieve a viable and supportable release.
Result / impact
The broker portal was successfully delivered, replacing an inefficient manual process with a functional digital solution. The programme regained stakeholder confidence, and the organisation was able to move forward with a clearer, more controlled approach to third-party digital delivery.
Revamping Websites for The Family Building Society
Led the coordinated rebuild and relaunch of multiple public-facing websites, managing third-party delivery and infrastructure transition while maintaining service continuity.
Rebuilding and relaunching public-facing websites in a regulated environment
The problem
The Family Building Society’s primary websites were built on legacy infrastructure that limited scalability, increased operational risk, and constrained the organisation’s ability to evolve its digital presence. A coordinated rebuild was required across multiple sites while maintaining service continuity and regulatory confidence.
Why it mattered
The websites were critical customer and intermediary touchpoints. Any failure during delivery risked reputational impact, service disruption, and loss of confidence from internal and external stakeholders. The transition also involved migrating away from legacy hosting arrangements, introducing additional technical and operational risk.
My role
I was responsible for leading the delivery of the website rebuild and relaunch, coordinating third-party developers, internal teams, and external specialists. This included managing scope, dependencies, and delivery risk, and ensuring progress remained aligned with organisational priorities.
What changed
I established clear delivery structure and governance across the programme, aligned stakeholders on priorities, and managed the transition from legacy infrastructure to a modern hosting environment. Third-party delivery was coordinated to ensure dependencies were managed effectively and releases were controlled and predictable.
Result / impact
The websites were successfully rebuilt and relaunched, providing the organisation with a more robust, scalable digital platform. Delivery risk was managed throughout, service continuity was maintained, and the organisation was positioned to evolve its digital presence with greater confidence and flexibility.
Operational Transformation & Governance
Operating Playbooks and Ways-of-Working Standardisation at Sliide
Led the creation of operational playbooks and standardised ways of working across multiple teams, improving consistency, clarity, and delivery confidence as the organisation matured.
Operating Playbooks and Ways-of-Working Standardisation in a Scaling Organisation
The context
This work was delivered within a digital product business transitioning from startup-style delivery into a more operationally mature organisation. Teams had grown quickly, processes had evolved organically, and much of the organisation’s knowledge existed informally or as tribal understanding rather than documented practice.
As delivery complexity increased, the absence of clear operating models began to create friction, inconsistency, and avoidable dependency on individuals.
The problem
Key operational teams were working effectively but inconsistently. Processes varied by team and individual, documentation was sparse or outdated, and there was no single source of truth for how work should be initiated, delivered, escalated, or supported.
This created risk in several areas: onboarding new team members was slow, cross-team collaboration relied heavily on personal relationships, and leadership lacked confidence that work would be handled consistently during periods of change or absence.
The challenge was to introduce structure and clarity without imposing heavyweight process or disrupting delivery momentum.
Why it mattered
As the organisation scaled, the cost of ambiguity increased. Without shared operating standards, delivery quality depended too heavily on individual experience, making the business vulnerable to disruption and limiting its ability to scale sustainably.
Clear operating playbooks were needed to improve resilience, reduce reliance on tribal knowledge, and create a more predictable and transparent operating environment across technical and operational teams.
My role
I led the design and delivery of multiple operating playbooks across CloudOps, Revenue Operations, Customer Success, and partner engagement workflows.
This was a hands-on role that combined facilitation, analysis, and authorship. I worked directly with teams to understand how work was actually being done, challenged inconsistencies, and translated informal practices into clear, practical documentation.
Alongside content creation, I ensured the playbooks aligned with how work was tracked day-to-day, integrating them with existing tooling and delivery rhythms rather than treating them as static documents.
What changed
I ran structured workshops with each team to map current ways of working, identify pain points, and agree on consistent approaches to common scenarios such as incident response, partner onboarding, change requests, and escalation.
These sessions were used to produce clear, accessible operating playbooks that defined roles, responsibilities, workflows, and decision points. The focus was on clarity and usability rather than bureaucracy — documenting what teams needed to operate effectively, not what looked good on paper.
Where appropriate, these playbooks were used to support wider operational improvements, including better cross-team coordination and more predictable handovers between functions.
Result / impact
The organisation gained clearer, more consistent ways of working across multiple teams. Onboarding became faster, collaboration improved, and teams were less dependent on informal knowledge or individual memory.
From a leadership perspective, the playbooks provided greater confidence that work would be handled consistently, even as teams changed or grew.
They also laid the foundation for more formal governance and operational maturity without sacrificing the flexibility required in a product-led environment.
Standardising partner engagement and onboarding at Sliide
As the organisation grew, partner onboarding and engagement processes varied significantly by team, creating delivery friction and inconsistent expectations. This programme introduced a clear, repeatable engagement model that aligned Customer Success, Product, Engineering, and external partners, reducing onboarding effort and improving delivery confidence.
Standardising partner engagement and onboarding in a scaling business
The problem
As the organisation scaled, new partners were being onboarded through a mix of informal processes, tribal knowledge, and ad-hoc coordination between teams. Customer Success, Product, Engineering, and Commercial teams each interacted with partners differently, leading to inconsistent expectations, duplicated effort, and avoidable delivery friction. There was no single, agreed view of how partners should be engaged, onboarded, or supported once live.
Why it mattered
Partners were a critical part of the business model, and poor onboarding or unclear engagement models increased delivery risk, slowed time-to-value, and placed unnecessary strain on internal teams. As partner volume increased, the lack of a standard approach made scaling difficult and risked undermining commercial relationships and delivery confidence.
My role
I was asked to work closely with the Customer Success team to define and document a clear partner engagement and onboarding model. This involved facilitating workshops, capturing existing practices, identifying gaps, and translating informal ways of working into a structured, repeatable runbook that could be used consistently across teams.
What changed
I worked with Customer Success and supporting teams to map the end-to-end partner lifecycle, from initial engagement through onboarding and into steady-state operations. Clear ownership points, handovers, and expectations were defined, along with supporting artefacts and checklists. The resulting Partner Engagement Runbook provided a single source of truth that aligned internal teams and created a consistent experience for partners.
Result / impact
The organisation gained a clearer, more predictable partner onboarding and engagement process, reducing ambiguity and delivery friction.
Customer Success teams were better equipped to manage partner relationships, internal teams had clearer expectations of their role at each stage, and partner interactions became more structured and repeatable. This improved delivery confidence and supported the business’s ability to scale partner relationships without relying on informal knowledge or individual experience.
Infrastructure & Multi-Party Delivery
Cloud Infrastructure Cost Optimisation at Sliide
Led a structured cloud cost optimisation programme within a high-growth product environment, improving financial control and predictability while maintaining platform resilience and service continuity.
Cloud Infrastructure Cost Optimisation in a High-Growth Product Environment
The context
This programme was delivered within Sliide a digital product business transitioning from startup-style growth into a more operationally mature organisation at the time. The platform supported revenue-critical services at scale, with cloud infrastructure costs distributed across multiple teams and services, and limited historic governance over how spend related to actual business usage.
The problem
Cloud infrastructure costs had grown rapidly and unpredictably. Spend was fragmented across data platforms, logging, and core services, making it difficult for both technical and commercial stakeholders to understand cost drivers or forecast future spend with confidence.
At the same time, the platform could not tolerate aggressive or poorly controlled cost-cutting. Any optimisation activity needed to preserve service reliability, data integrity, and operational resilience while still delivering meaningful financial outcomes.
Why it mattered
Infrastructure represented a significant recurring operational cost. Without stronger governance and visibility, the organisation faced margin pressure, reduced forecasting accuracy, and increased risk during periods of growth or change.
Leadership needed assurance that infrastructure spend was intentional, controlled, and aligned to real usage — not simply the by-product of legacy decisions or unmanaged scaling.
My role
I led a structured cost optimisation programme spanning CloudOps, Data Engineering, and Finance. My role combined programme leadership with operational oversight, including:
- Defining the scope and objectives of the optimisation programme
- Establishing delivery plans and optimisation workstreams
- Facilitating working sessions to identify and prioritise savings opportunities
- Acting as the bridge between technical teams and senior commercial stakeholders
I owned the programme plan, maintained alignment between optimisation activity and live platform usage, and was responsible for translating technical actions into decision-ready financial narratives for leadership.
What changed
Rather than treating cost reduction as a one-off exercise, I introduced a programme-led approach to infrastructure optimisation. This included:
- Regular, structured optimisation workshops across engineering and data teams
- Separating predictable workloads from ad-hoc usage to enable smarter scaling
- Introducing clearer governance around when infrastructure could be scaled down, removed, or reconfigured safely
- Improving cost visibility by linking technical changes directly to financial outcomes
This created a shared understanding between engineering and finance, enabling confident optimisation without increasing operational risk.
Result / impact
The programme delivered a sustained reduction in monthly infrastructure spend and significantly improved cost predictability. Leadership gained clearer visibility of cost drivers, engineering teams were able to optimise with confidence, and infrastructure spend became an actively governed part of operational decision-making.
Beyond the immediate savings, the organisation moved toward a more mature operating model — balancing financial discipline with platform resilience and scalability.
Get in Touch
If you’re hiring for a delivery or programme leadership role, or need short-term support on a complex initiative, feel free to get in touch.