Business value aligned project management in digital banking – a case of United Commercial Bank PLC (UCB PLC)

Abstract

This internship at United Commercial Bank PLC in the Digital Technology and Innovation Division lasted three months from October to December 2025. It was supposed to connect what I learned in my BBA program with real work in digital banking: for example, project management, or how the organization works daily. UCB is a large private bank in Bangladesh, and I felt that getting exposed to working there would be somewhat relevant. I was an Intern in Project Management, working on the Bank Digitalization Project. That involved supporting senior managers with planning and coordination of stuff. I created and maintained documents. I attended meetings related to the requirement analysis phase. In addition, I assisted groups related to the business, technical, and operational aspects, working collaboratively. We applied Agile and Scrums, which I was not exposed to much. Tools such as Jira and Notion assisted considerably. In addition, it provided experience involving technology projects within a bank that operates under a set of firm regulations. The experience optimized the process within a bank by writing and monitoring projects using user stories. Furthermore, it facilitated coordination of departments. For me, this experience assisted with analysis, communication, and problem-solving. The bank is hierarchically organized but professionally run. Management appears to have a participative leadership style. They emphasize digitization quite strongly. The marketing function is customer-oriented. There is integration of information systems. This is how they can counter competition and technological shifts in banking. Financially, their assets and deposit bases are quite stable. However, I do think they require some focus on asset quality provisioning and cost competitiveness. In the project phase, I analyzed how project management correlates to business value in digital projects. In this case, I carried out a survey of managers, project managers, and developers (tech roles). The areas focused on in the project phase include governance, business alignment, management of resources and budgets, collaboration, measuring value delivery, and business goal support from tech capabilities. This experience has shown that indeed value alignment is within the consideration of all concerned individuals. The management of the project has good governance in place. Processes are standardized, and there has been huge collaboration. This, in a manner of speaking, provides a solid execution mechanism towards doing work for value. To other individuals, this internship experience would possibly render differently, but in my experience, this seems like a robust system. This internship experience has illustrated how these constituents are integral to positive performance in a regulated competitive environment.