This is not the part-2 that I promised; rather, it is a quick one to address a question I was asked about the blog I posted last week.  The question was, can you define “whopper”?  It’s a fair question.  I must admit, it’s a bit of a woolly term, and probably won’t get you too far when trying to persuade Upper Management to fund some extra resources. 

The precise size and shape of a program of work to manage the standards release is different for every organization of course. It depends on many factors including:

• the number of external counterparties
• the complexity of the internal system application architecture
• the level of compliance with market practice 

Perhaps the best thing we can do at a high level is to provide some recent historical context.  Perhaps a cursory comparison to SR2013; still fresh in our minds; will give us some insight into how much bigger, how much more time we need to spend on the next release. 

So, I’ve had a dig around in my notes in my highly organized filing system, and here goes: 

Total number of CRs. 

• 2013: 57
• 2014: 67 

Total number of Level-1 CRs.

• 2013: 5
• 2014: 9 

Total number of Level-2- CRs.

• 2013: 30
• 2014: 39 

Total number of Level-2+ CRs.

• 2013: 22
• 2014: 19 

So, ignoring the Level-1’s, 2014 is about 12% bigger than 2013, by CR count, although the number of “serious” changes drops slightly.  However, the devil is always in the detail so we need to probe further. 

(The following stats exclude the Level-1 changes) 

The total number of changes across all messages:

• 2013: 244
• 2014: 265 

The total number of Level 2- changes:

• 2013: 86
• 2014: 135 

The total number of Level 2+ changes:

• 2013: 158
• 2014: 130 

The total number of message types impacted by all of the changes:

• 2013: 48
• 2014: 63 

Breakdown by message category:

• 2013:
  • Cat-0: 1
  • Cat-1: 3
  • Cat-3: 145
  • Cat-5: 58
  • Cat-6: 37 

• 2014:
  • Cat-1: 6
  • Cat-2: 2
  • Cat-3: 84
  • Cat-5: 147
  • Cat-6: 21
  • Cat-9: 2
  • Cat-n: 3 

That’s as deep as I’m prepared to go here.  A couple of obvious conclusions jump right off the page:

• An increase of 31% in the number of message types impacted by the changes.  This automatically increases the size and the risk of the release because more code has to be touched.
• An increase in the number of changes to the Cat-5 messages of more than 150%.  If you’re in the securities business then be prepared for a hefty spike in the resource requirements this year. 

If this series of blogs achieves anything then I hope it encourages you to start your planning a little earlier than usual; and I hope that the stats and facts outlined above serve as a basis for you to set management expectations.

More in a week or two…