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Delivering excellently

Complex transformation is notoriously hard to get right. We’ve all seen the stats and stories about failure, with programmes out of control and delivery teams lost in the detail, making poor decisions, losing stakeholder confidence and ultimately not achieving the promised business value.

How do you avoid this and maximise the chances of success?

As we said in our mobilisation blog, the first step is to invest upfront to set-up for success. The next step is to get moving – great ideas mean nothing if they are not turned into action and driven with pace.

No one can guarantee you will hit every milestone, so don’t believe that sales pitch! Conditions change, assumptions prove invalid and consequently milestones will move. However, get the right capability and delivery mechanisms in place and you can remain in control, so when things do move, you understand the implications and you know how to react. It will still be hard work and there will be considerable heartache along the way, but ultimately you will have a greater chance of landing the outcomes you set out to achieve.

Engage highly capable leadership and a strong delivery team

Don’t underestimate the capability required to lead a transformation, and don’t assume that you necessarily have this capability to hand, in-house. This is a specialised skillset to provide pace and confidence, driving the key outcomes with independence and full visibility, working with the business sponsor to keep all stakeholders on board.

Inject the right mix of talent into the delivery teams, pushing forward critical areas of delivery across business and IT change, removing blockers and managing effective teams. Make sure that you have all areas covered, and focus in on often problematic areas, such as data, establishing clear data governance, working across data management, insight and analytics, providing a robust data migration and cutover strategy if required.

Focus on the business outcome and ensure all areas are pulling for the change

Establish solution ownership and ensure an ongoing match to the business strategy, maintaining design coherence across the delivery streams as the transformation progresses. Stand-up a dedicated business change team to foster excellent engagement across business stakeholders so that all areas are pulling for the change and readying themselves to realise the benefits.

Join-up delivery across all methods and locations

In the same way as our airspace needs governance and control to avoid crashes and make sure the right planes land in the right places, a complex transformation also needs associated ‘air-traffic control’. You may have agile delivery teams, waterfall projects, teams working remotely and multiple delivery partners, all of which need to be joined-up to ensure alignment to the overall transformation. All contributing business value in the right order, with all dependencies and linkages to the overall solution understood.

Drive decisive decisions via transparent reporting and governance

Establish one version of the truth, with robust programme controls around risk, issues, planning, progress, finance, resourcing and communications. Feed this into the right level of governance (light enough to remain efficient, but strong enough to hold delivery to account), so that the right decisions can be made at the right time.

To discuss further, please contact David Knappett 

Mobile: 07973 152494  | email: [email protected]   