Smells fishy? Passing the project feasibility smell test

​Welcome back to our 5 Top Challenges for Digital Leaders series!
Last week we started talking about digital roadmaps and making sure you’re working on the right things.

​I’m a huge fan of finding your transformation priorities at the sweet spot of desirability, viability and feasibility. We covered desirability last week - are you working on the things your customers want (catch-up here if you missed it).

​The other two critical factors that need to go into your roadmap plans are what your organisation needs (is it viable for your organisation) and what can you actually deliver (is it feasible for your organisation).

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Viability is generally the easiest factor to assess. Is this feature good for your organisation? Does it drive revenue, reduce costs, reduce organisational effort or eliminate risks? Does it help you achieve regulatory compliance or keep your directors out of jail? All of those things are worthy causes for an organisation to pursue and by virtue of being a transformation leader in your organisation, you’re probably an expert at assessing why this change is good for your business.

If you’re not then perhaps this post on benefits might help.
 
Feasibility on the other hand is often harder to assess and getting this wrong can have repercussions for the success of your project.
It’s alarming how often digital transformation leaders get it wrong.

Just this week I read a great article about the three biggest reasons why a company’s transformation fails. The author, Mike Stahnke, highlights that the three reasons for failure – teams don’t buy into the plan, companies fail to standardise and lack of willingness to change – are really cultural challenges that if managed properly can be overcome.

This is true, but I’d take it a step further and argue that the overarching issue is a bit more specific than “cultural challenges”. It’s a failure to accurately assess the feasibility of your organisation being able to implement this transformation.

In other words, do you have a hope in hell of delivering that change or will your organisation tell you a giant “I told you so”?
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Let me explain.

I believe that many competent people in organisations develop a “smell test” when it comes to transformation programmes. The smell test (which is often subconscious) balances what the project says it’s going to do versus the perception of a project’s credibility.

There are influencers (with differing expertise and seniority) all around your organisation making calls about whether your project will succeed or fail. And regardless of whether they verbalise their concerns or not, their pre-emptive judgment has a tangible impact on others getting on board to support the project.

The projects that don’t “smell right” are usually the ones where teams don’t really commit to succeeding, team members do their own thing instead of working together and the wider organisation will not go out of its way to support a project that seems doomed to fail.

These are the projects where the leaders look back and say “well the team never got on board with the plan” or “the organisation wasn’t willing to change”.

The good news is that a dedicated approach to achieving credibility and relevance offers a way back from a fishy smelling project.

And stops your new project from failing the smell test in the first place.
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You don’t necessarily have to have all the answers upfront. But you do have to demonstrate competence and a great understanding of the questions you will need to find answers to.

Before you add that new product or feature to your transformation roadmap it’s worthwhile to run through some of these questions:

• Does your project leader know what they are doing?
• Do you have enough budget and people?
• Do you have the necessary technical and project skills? How can you acquire some expertise for new technologies or new operating methodologies?
• Have you provided sufficient clarity of purpose and operating model?
• Are you prepared to make hard calls (people, priorities, scope, budget) in order to make your project successful?
• Do you have broad support for your project across your organisation and a plan in place to maintain that support?
• Is there a more important project that is going to get in your way and do you have the ability to work around it?
• What are the greatest risks to your delivery (that you know now) and what does a plan B look like to address those risks?

 
(All these questions are also useful to ask regularly throughout the life of the project too).

Next week we’ll start talking about channel strategies. See you then!

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