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Author: Mark Whitfield
Welcome to my site!
After graduating in Computing in 1990, I accepted a position as a programmer at a Runcorn based software house specialising in electronic banking software, namely sp/ARCHITECT-BANK on Tandem Computers (now HPE NonStop). This was before the internet became more prevalent and so the notion of enabling desktop access to company accounts for inter-account transfers and book keeping was still quite a cutting edge idea (and smartphones only ever hinted at in Space 1999). The company was called The Software Partnership (which was taken over by Deluxe Data in 1994).
I spent 5 years in Runcorn developing code for SP/ARCHITECT for various banks like TSB, Bank of Scotland, Rabobank and Girofon (Denmark) to name but a few. I then moved onto a software house in Salford Quays for further bank facing projects. After a further 23 years in the IT industry and now a Senior IT Project Manager (both Agile and Waterfall delivery), I thought I would echo out my Career Profile in this corner of the internet for quick and easy access.
A HPE NonStop article I wrote in 2013 while I was working for Insider Technologies Limited in Salford Quays. I was working with a bank client in Saudi Arabia at the time who required a browser based solution for querying terabytes of transaction log data downloaded from a HPE NonStop mainframe. I themed the article on sci-fi movies. PDF version – page 12.
Episode IV – A New Hope (…for both Archived Legacy and Real-Time Transactions and NonStop EMS Alerts)
Mark Whitfield, Globally published HPE NonStop journal
A long time ago (well, 2010) at an EBUG conference far, far away (I guess it depends on where you’re coming from but anyway, Madrid)…
Mark Whitfield, Globally published HPE NonStop journal – ‘The Connection’, 2013
Senior IT Project Manager Mark Whitfield attended the Bolton Institute of Higher Education (BIHE) from 1988 to 1990, graduating overall first in his class with a Distinction in his 2-year full-time BTEC HND in Computer Studies.
Mark Whitfield | Bolton Institute of Higher Education (BIHE) from 1988 to 1990
📊 Academic Overview & Curriculum
Institution & Dates: Attended September 1988 – July 1990 at Deane Road, Bolton, UK. BIHE later became the University of Bolton/Greater Manchester.
Core Modules: The curriculum combined technical and business disciplines, including Computer Systems Architecture, Programming Methodology, System Analysis, Data Processing, Business Information Systems, Business Studies, and Quantitative Techniques.
Course & Module Breakdown
The executive-level curriculum combined core computer science, software engineering, and business information systems across seven primary modules:
Computer Systems Architecture: Focused on hardware design, central processing unit (CPU) structures, and system configurations.
Programming Methodology (Theory / Practice): Covered software development lifecycles, core logic, code optimization, and a final-year practical project.
System Analysis: Taught methodologies for gathering business requirements, modeling systems, and mapping out technical system designs.
Data Processing: Addressed data management workflows, batch/transaction structures, and storage systems.
Business Studies: Provided foundational knowledge of organizational structures, commerce, and corporate operations.
Quantitative Techniques: Focused on mathematical, statistical, and analytical tools applied to business and computing problems.
Business Information Systems (Theory / Practice): Explored how information technology supports business decision-making and operational workflows.
💻 Final Year Project
His final year project was a student administration database system for BIHE: [1]
Architecture & Design: Utilized SSADM and a Third Normal Form (3NF) database model.
Tech Stack: Built on an ORACLE SQL database and ORACLE SQL-forms GUI running on MS-DOS, supporting full CRUD operations and transaction rollbacks.
Mark Whitfield | Graduated in Computer Studies in 1990 | BIHE
From December 2014 to January 2016, Mark Whitfield served as a Senior IT Digital Project Manager within the Online and Mobile Division at Betfred’s UK Head Office in Wigan, Lancashire. Operating in the highly competitive Gambling and Casinos industry, his role centered on governing fast-paced, end-to-end agile software releases for core, high-throughput web and mobile betting applications.
An in-depth breakdown of his technical scope, supplier ecosystem, regulatory landscape, and performance feedback illustrates his delivery footprint at Betfred.
Mark Whitfield | Betfred | Senior IT Digital Project Manager, 2014 thru 2016
Core Project Portfolios & Engineering Scope
Whitfield deployed the Agile SCRUM framework with rolling monthly sprint cycles to lead development across three foundational gaming pillars:
Sportsbook Engineering: Orchestrated core feature rollouts and update loops for high-volume football and horse racing markets.
Payment Infrastructure: Supervised the integration, expansion, and security of frontend payment methods and high-velocity transactional payment gateways.
Virtual Gaming Components: Managed the complex backend integration and middleware required to power online, computer-generated virtual casino products.
The technical environment demanded managing native software application stacks concurrently across three main consumer ecosystems: iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile.
Multi-Supplier Integration Ecosystem
A massive portion of Whitfield’s role involved cross-functional supplier management. Because individual platform layers were built by separate third-party providers, he served as the central point of integration, managing UK- and EU-based delivery teams across several major industry suppliers:
Mark Whitfield’s role involved cross-functional supplier management
Project Governance & Financial Control
Whitfield handled multi-million rolling digital operational and R&D budgets. Rather than relying on automated corporate budgeting suites, his methodology focused heavily on granular variance tracking:
Effort Burn Rates: He took direct ownership of the weekly effort burn rates across distributed internal and external software teams, tracking exact resource consumption against forecasts via Custom MS Excel Variance Frameworks.
Delivery Infrastructure: Everyday Agile sprint workflows, backlog grooming, and cross-supplier alignment were facilitated directly through Jira and Confluence.
Regulatory Constraints & The Political Landscape
The delivery environment was heavily influenced by aggressive UK mobile entertainment deregulation and compliance updates. Whitfield was tasked with protecting Betfred’s operational licensing by responding to unexpected compliance mandates:
System Change Requests (SCRs): He structured rapid update loops to push compliance edits through production on minimal notice.
Directives Compliance: Industry auditors and compliance analysts commended his engineering oversight for maintaining strict adherence to mandatory industry directives, including rigorous PCI compliance protocols for financial processing streams.
Feedback & Professional Endorsements
Assessments from his tenure at Betfred and across his overarching tech career highlight a few recurring themes from peers, clients, and auditors:
Risk Mitigation under Pressure: Praised for his capability to handle complex “political landscapes” where changing regulatory goals frequently threatened project timelines. He successfully bridged the gap between strict compliance deadlines and flexible agile execution.
Supplier Synchronization: Commended by cross-functional teams for his ability to hold external software shops (like Degree 53 and Playtech) accountable to a unified release schedule.
Hybrid Delivery Prowess: Recognized for seamlessly blending strict financial reporting models (like PRINCE2 metrics) with fast-paced software loops (SCRUM sprints)—a structural approach he eventually popularized in the broader IT community through his Project Management Templates Gallery.
Between 1990 and 1995, Mark Whitfield operated as a Programmer and Lead Analyst at The Software Partnership (TSP) (headquartered at Norton House in Runcorn, Cheshire), a highly specialised software house that was acquired by Deluxe Data International in 1994.
Mark Whitfield – The Software Partnership, Runcorn, Cheshire
This foundational era of his career focused on the engineering, development, and delivery of cutting-edge, pre-internet corporate electronic desktop banking systems—a highly innovative concept at the time, enabling corporate clients to access account information, balance books, and perform inter-account transfers before the mainstream adoption of the World Wide Web.
🏢 Technical & Operational Industry Breakdown
1. Core Architecture & Product Focus
The technical epicenter of Whitfield’s work during this period was the sp/ARCHITECT-BANK engine. Operating as a developer and Lead Analyst, he built, refactored, and enhanced critical back-end modules for this high-availability desktop banking platform. The solution eventually evolved to lay the groundwork for what became the widely known CONNEX advantage solution.
2. The Tandem Mainframe Ecosystem
Because electronic banking demands zero downtime and maximum transaction integrity, the entire software infrastructure was built upon fault-tolerant Tandem Mainframe Computers (which later evolved into Compaq, then HP, and are now known as HPE NonStop systems). Whitfield’s day-to-day engineering focused heavily on:
High-Availability Environments: Utilizing PATHWAY and PATHMAKER runtime environments for transaction processing and load balancing.
Database & File Systems: Designing and querying databases using NonStop SQL and the native Tandem hierarchical file system ENSCRIBE.
System Programming: Writing highly efficient transaction-processing code primarily in COBOL85 and SCOBOL (Screen COBOL for terminal interactions), alongside diagnostic tools like INSPECT and the EMS (Event Management Service) subsystem.
Interactive Media: Integrating Periphonics interactive touch-tone voice response software to expand banking access via early automated telephone interfaces.
Based out of the Runcorn head office, Whitfield frequently performed on-site delivery, integration, and code customization directly at high-security client operations centres. Key financial institutions served during this 5-year tenure included:
Barclays Bank: Leading on-site delivery for the BBM II platform out of Barclays’ major operations centers in Knutsford and Poole.
Mark Whitfield | Lead Analyst | 1991-1993 | Barclays Business Master II | Radbroke Hall, Knutsford
Bank of Scotland: Developing bespoke desktop banking functionalities.
Rabobank (Netherlands): Extending the sp/ARCHITECT software framework to accommodate European international cross-border specifications.
Girofon (Denmark): Designing early telephone-based interactive banking capabilities.
4. Delivery Methodologies
Reflecting the software governance of the early 1990s, projects were heavily anchored in structured Waterfall lifecycles. However, working within a nimble software house like TSP also meant pioneering early iterative development practices to quickly build out custom components for various banks, blending rigid infrastructure with agile customer delivery models.
📊 Strategic Recommendations Based on This Era
Analysing this crucial early segment of Whitfield’s career yields specific recommendations for leveraging his technical foundations in contemporary, high-stakes enterprise projects:
Leverage for Modern High-Availability Core Banking: Because his technical foundations are rooted in fault-tolerant Tandem/HPE NonStop systems, he is uniquely qualified to manage risk, architecture upgrades, and modern digital transformations for core transaction engines that cannot afford even a single second of downtime.
Bridge Legacy Mainframes with Cloud Architectures: Having operated at the ground floor of pre-internet electronic banking, he should be deployed as a key translation layer or Engagement Manager when financial institutions attempt to decouple legacy COBOL/Tandem environments into modern microservices, cloud ecosystems (e.g., AWS, Azure), or API-led connectivity layers like MuleSoft.
Deploy on Multi-Supplier & M&A Environments: The transition of TSP through its acquisition by Deluxe Data in 1994 provides an early template of navigating organizational shift, platform re-branding, and cultural migration. This experience makes him an ideal lead for highly complex, multi-supplier governance structures within retail banking integrations.
During his 18-year tenure (1995–2013) at Insider Technologies Limited, located in Salford Quays, Manchester, UK, Mark Whitfield operated as a pivotal Technical Project Manager and Product Manager. He was responsible for delivering high-availability service management, real-time transaction tracking, and monitoring software specifically engineered for the critical banking infrastructure.
Managing complex multi-phase budgets and cross-functional teams, he built a reputation for bridging deep technical mainframe programming with strict enterprise delivery frameworks.
Mark Whitfield | Insider Technologies Limited
🛠️ Core Technology Stack & Architecture
Whitfield’s technical remit centered around optimizing and safeguarding core enterprise payment channels. His work predominantly interface-mapped high-volume mainframes to distributed client architectures:
HPE NonStop (Tandem NSK): The foundation of his engineering background, managing low-level environments across fault-tolerant hardware. He regularly navigated systems containing tools like COBOL, SCOBOL, PATHWAY, TAL, and NonStop SQL.
BASE24 Processing: He oversaw performance tracking frameworks specifically for BASE24 transaction message formats running over XPNET. This was foundational for core ATM driving and Point of Sale (POS) routing systems.
Cross-Platform Operating Systems: His project pipelines bridge native NSK layers with distributed implementations across Windows, Linux, and Unix environments.
📦 Product Management & Implementation Portfolio
Acting in a hybrid Product/Project management capacity, Whitfield spearheaded the development, deployment, and benchmarking of several flagship corporate tracking products:
Real-Time Log Extraction (RTLX): An operational monitoring tool designed to ingest massive volumes of raw, time-sensitive system data. RTLX parses transaction streams to catch processing anomalies before failures disrupt end customers.
Reflex Suite (Reflex 80:20 / Reflex ONE24): Led deployment of operations consoles, status dashboards, and task ownership allocation modules. These solutions mapped complex transaction pathways for tier-1 institutions.
XPERT24: A dedicated performance tracker optimized to monitor transaction flow and bottlenecking across automated banking streams.
Enterprise Security Integration: Managed 24×7 specialized support architectures for Thales e-Security cryptographic frameworks (e.g., SafeSign Authentication and Security Resource Managers) running concurrently on NSK and Unix.
🏢 Major Tier-1 Institutional Engagements
Under Whitfield’s oversight, these specialized tracking platforms were actively implemented for some of the world’s most critical financial networks and clearinghouses:
Central & Investment Banks: The Bank of England and Euroclear (on-site benchmarking software development for Crestco).
Retail & Corporate Institutions: Major blue-chip entities including HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Alliance & Leicester, and Al Rajhi Bank.
📈 Methodology & Project Governance
Whitfield deployed rigorous, multi-faceted methodologies tailored to the risk profiles of transaction-critical applications:
PRINCE2 Execution: As a certified PRINCE2 Practitioner, he established formal change management controls, stage-boundary approvals, and complex risk logs necessary for regulatory compliance.
Waterfall-to-Agile Hybridisation: Led transitions converting traditional, rigid waterfall workstreams into incremental, iterative release cycles. This approach maintained mainframe stability while increasing the delivery cadence of analytics tools.
Technical Bid & Partnership Support: Acted as a core technical anchor for large international Hewlett Packard (HP) enterprise sales bids. He frequently ran platform presentations alongside global partners like Insession/ACI.
💡 Professional Industry Recommendations
Evaluating Mark Whitfield’s extensive body of work at Insider Technologies reveals distinct operational strengths that can translate into your own project environments:
Deploy Hybrid Delivery in Highly Regulated Sectors: Don’t completely abandon structured governance when adopting Agile in banking, defense, or government spaces. Follow Whitfield’s approach: wrap iterative software development loops inside a robust PRINCE2 governance shell to cleanly handle multi-supplier tracking, strict compliance reporting, and rigid budget milestones.
Bridge Technical Engineering with Stakeholder Communication: A premier technical PM should act as an interpreter. Emulate his style by maintaining a working grasp of deep back-end infrastructures (like HPE NonStop/SQL/APIs) while effectively presenting business value to commercial partners and C-suite executives during high-stakes sales bids.
Proactively Address Legacy Technical Debt: Prioritize real-time observation. Mirroring his reliance on tools like RTLX, ensure your project portfolios prioritize early anomaly detection and continuous infrastructure mapping. This reduces operational risk before migrating legacy frameworks to modern cloud architectures.
Leverage Standardised Toolkit Governance: Streamline delivery by standardising project tracking mechanisms. Whitfield is highly regarded for building and utilizing comprehensive, reusable Project Management Templates (RAID logs, Plan on a Page, financial forecasts) to enforce absolute clarity across distributed R&D engineering teams.
