Steven Alexander Kok

Steven Kok is one of the Topic Leaders for DevOps, Agile@Scale, Blockchain, and Open Banking at Boston Consulting Group. Steven has over ten years of experience in technology and operations strategy in the financial services, energy, and semiconductors businesses.

Steven’s chief interest is in helping clients transform the way they deliver digital transformations; he enables them to use agile ways of working and embrace DevOps practices to quickly and efficiently develop higher-quality software. Steven also supports clients as they shape their strategic ambitions for Blockchain, ensuring they focus on valuable use cases with higher chances of success, as well as helping them deliver scalable propositions.

Within the financial institutions sector, Steven focuses mostly on technology and operations strategy for capital markets and corporate banking, as well as helping financial institutions across their spectrum honing and delivering on their open banking ambitions.

AREAS OF EXPERTISE

EDUCATION

MBA, ESADE Business School
Executive Management Training Programme, INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France and The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Electrical Engineering, Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires

Publications and Videos

Don’t Manage Your Digital Platform Like a Shared Service

Digital platforms are fast and efficient—but development often goes wrong. By avoiding the traps that hinder platform development, companies can improve performance and innovation.

Why Your Agile Coaching Isn’t Working—and How to Fix It

At many organizations, problems scaling agile can be traced to problems scaling agile coaching.

The Battle for Speed Is Won in the DevOps Arena

DevOps is critical for software-intensive businesses. Here are five principles to ensure that you can attain the necessary velocity.

Taming Nonfinancial Risk in Financial Institutions and Beyond

For financial institutions and other industries, the current crisis has only increased the number and severity of nonfinancial risks (NFRs) in areas such as cybersecurity and ESG. This session will focus on the urgency of NFR management for financial institutions, including a precise view on critical NFRs, clear organizational responsibilities in the “three lines of defense” (3 LoD) model—including central function setup—and a structured steering cycle.

Agile Governance and Funding—How Outcome-Oriented Governance Unleashes Agile at Scale

BCG’s business review approach for agile governance weds strong alignment on outcome-oriented strategies with the high degree of autonomy required for teams to deliver value at speed and at scale. The session will include an outline of the BCG agile-at-scale governance and funding framework as well as real-world client-impact examples.

Outcome-Oriented Governance Unleashes Agile at Scale

Our business review approach relies on annual and quarterly business reviews as a framework to balance alignment with autonomy.

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Get Ready for the Future of Money

As digital currencies move from the sandbox to the high street, their impact will be profound. So will the first-mover advantage. Leaders must prepare now.

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Practicalities of Scaling Agile: Measuring Delivery Productivity in Agile

In collaboration with his colleagues, Andrew Jennings writes about delivery productivity and how to finally tackle this holy grail (and painful) question through a basket of measures that reflects the underlying value drivers of agile.

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Practicalities of scaling agile: When delivering faster becomes a problem and how to solve it

Companies that undertake a change in the organization have been smart to embrace agile ways of working in recent years. For the most part, this results in higher frequency of capabilities being deployed.

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Practicalities of Scaling Agile: Scrum or Kanban Needn’t Be a Choice; Think of It as a Continuum

Read the article on LinkedIn.

4 Strategic Observations and Questions on Facebook’s Libra Proposal

Facebook’s Libra announcement has caused a stir in the market. But it may be too soon to make final proclamations. Observers and market participants should keep an eye on these areas and expect answers to make sure Libra has a chance of success when it is introduced next year.

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The 4 Factors for Successful Blockchain Adoption - Reflections from Blockchain Expo Global 2019