Company
Plan it as a sequence of small, independently valuable changes against named business constraints. Programmes defined by technology adoption rather than by a problem are the ones that run for years and deliver little.
'Quotes take four days because pricing lives in three systems' is a problem you can solve and measure. 'Digital transformation' is a budget line with no finish condition, which is why so many of these programmes end without anyone being able to say whether they worked.
The first project should be small enough to finish, valuable enough to notice, and instructive enough to change the plan. Large simultaneous change is how organisations discover their assumptions were wrong after committing to all of them.
Most of the delay in these programmes comes from unclear ownership, disagreement about which system is authoritative for a given record, and steps preserved for reasons nobody can now explain. Software makes those explicit rather than solving them.
Build the measurement before the build.
If nobody can state today's cycle time, error rate or cost per transaction, nobody will be able to demonstrate improvement afterwards, and the programme will be judged on impressions instead of evidence.
On process and ownership rather than technology: unclear accountability, disagreement over which system holds the authoritative record, and steps kept for reasons nobody can explain. Software exposes those problems rather than resolving them.
Short enough to finish and be judged: typically weeks, not quarters. The purpose of the first phase is as much to test the assumptions in the plan as to deliver the change itself.
Plan it as a sequence of small, independently valuable changes against named business constraints. Programmes defined by technology adoption rather than by a problem are the ones that run for years and deliver little.
You have read what we think. If you want to know what it means for your case specifically, describe it and we will tell you which parts of how to plan a digital transformation project actually apply — and which do not.
