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Governing a $15M+ AI/ML portfolio in telecom
At Bell Canada I led a large portfolio of AI/ML, data, automation, and cloud programs, with the governance, financial control, and executive alignment it needed to deliver.
$15M+AI/ML portfolio
100+person cross functional team
15+business cases to steering committee
22%lower cloud spend
The problem
The portfolio spanned AI/ML, data, robotic process automation, and Google Cloud migration work across several business units, with budgets from $1M to $15M+.
Delivery depended on 100+ people, many of them vendor resources, and on steady executive confidence in where the money was going.
The approach
- Established PMO governance with KPI frameworks for scope, cost, and quality across every program.
- Built AI/ML business cases jointly with technical leads and presented them to the steering committee 15+ times.
- Ran financial control end to end: CAPEX and OPEX planning, year end forecasts, and variance analysis reviewed with directors.
- Managed vendor delivery through statements of work and SAP Fieldglass, from procurement strategy to monthly billing.
- Led enterprise incident management for S1 and S2 incidents: ran incident bridges, drove ownership and stakeholder cadence, and improved the process.
- Coached 10+ Scrum Masters as the organization moved toward agile at scale.
The outcome
- 22% reduction in cloud spend while maintaining 99.9% uptime across Google Cloud migrations.
- 5+ agentic AI initiatives delivered, improving response times by 45%.
- 20% fewer project delays through continuous improvement of delivery practices.
What I would tell another leader
Executives fund portfolios they can see. Clear financials and honest status reporting bought the room to take on bigger AI bets.