Are you confident enough to say that your digital transformation project is on track?
Be able to clearly answer effectively to this question is key because most of the time digital transformations (related to a new system for teams) are considered easy at first approach. Because from a general point of view, as it has been presented either by the vendors, the company representative, or the IT team to make you buy it, dream and reap many benefits.
But most of the time, the reality is different and a more complex with more use cases than expected, it involves multiple parts of the business, it needs to be integrated, the business and technical teams need to align on a common system and processes. Is that really what you signed up for?
Let me give you some of my tips so you can check if you are on the right path as your project is already launched:
- Pit stop, breathe and look at where you are going and compares it to where you wanted to go at the beginning of the project. Use visualization techniques to imagine the future way of working (meditate for example). Gaps and potential frictions will come to you so clearly. Don’t let them go, write them down.
- Check your project plan is organized by core business process and sub-process workstream, and not by IT deliverables. If it is the case, your good, otherwise you are in danger of missing business benefits. I’ll write specific articles about this – it works so well. It is a game changer!
- In the future, when you make choices, consider the impact on the business value as your prime criteria to ensure benefits and adoption. The mistake here, is to think about the budget first or to consider you and your team as the prime criteria. This can be dramatic, for example if you lose an expected key benefit for a small effort. Always find the right balance and make trade-offs to be sure.
- Are you running your project in a “project mode”? Regardless of the size of the project (even for small size project), proceed in “project mode”, but not proceed as if it were an extension of your daily business. Whatever your method (agile, waterfall, on the fly). And above all, don’t be afraid of the expression “project mode”. Getting into “project mode” is mainly a mindset to have, supported by some techniques and tools to support it. It is not so difficult to learn and to use for small projects. It just requires few adjustments and habits, but these are key.
If you want to put back on tracks some projects, have questions on a current initiative or if you just want to exchange your tips with me, don’t hesitate to contact me or pick a slot in my agenda (link below). I would be delighted to exchange with you.
JC
Written by Jean-Christophe Laurent, jclaurent@penonpartners.com, CEO at Penon Partners
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