In some team-sports, an average team can do well if they have a star-player in the team. In these instances one could say that the team is as good as the best player. In other sports, a team could easily loose if one of the players are not up to scratch. This is a situation where the team is as good as the worst player.

The problem with mobile banking deployments is that so many things must work in order for the service to be delivered. If any of these things are not in place or working, the total mobile banking solution would be disfunctional. Mobile banking deployments are a team sport that is dependent on all components working, and this means that if any thing goes wrong, all will not work.

For instance, even if the software on the handset work, the connectivity is in place, all the registrations and the routing through the firewalls are sorted and the connection to the bank and the security server are operational, a bill payment transaction will fail if the connection to the bill-payment server is slow, times out or is not available. It is insightful to sit down and trace all the transactions and the many number of elements that are touched in order to deliver a simple transaction. And what makes it worse, is that the service is as good as the worse component.

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