Mark Holland

Background

About Mark Holland

I am an SC cleared Senior Enterprise Architect with 29 years of client-facing experience. Most of my career has been with IT service providers, giving me the opportunity to work with a large number of clients of varying sizes, technologies, and complexities. In the last ten years the roles I have undertaken have involved me being the technical authority of enterprise-size accounts, governing a team of IT professionals through the project lifecycle until the point of operational acceptance. My more recent roles have led me to work increasingly outside of project delivery, focusing on IT strategy, roadmap, stakeholder engagement and governance. I have extensive experience in orchestrating multi-million-pound transformations of large IT estates. This includes technically owning an award-winning £12M transformation program for a local authority. Also, a complex 2-year Ministry of Defence project that delivered everything on-time and on budget, resulting in the Army inviting the management team to a meal in the Officers Mess as a way of a thank you. I was subsequently asked by the Capita COO to present a 15-minute presentation on his ‘All Hands’ call to discuss why this was so successful, and the lessons learnt. I am the technical representative at C-level meetings, providing stakeholder management and obtaining support for strategies, projects and business change. I deliver the hard messages objectively, being resolute where necessary, and are an advocate for the value streams, ensuring they have what they need to produce successful outcomes. I promote the importance of Enterprise Architecture by encouraging standardisation, re-use of artefacts, and I monitor progress and quality through regular governance review. I ensure requirements are specific and measurable, design decisions are objective, and documentation is clear and concise. Being in a senior position, I recognise that the technical aspects of the role can often be the easy part. Some of the most demanding yet rewarding parts of the role can be in mentoring team members, identifying strengths, providing opportunities, developing relationships and tackling interpersonal dynamics amongst the wider team. I feel using technical expertise in combination with these interpersonal skills enables me to be as effective as I can in my role.