Take a look at the slide decks, the project charter documents and the monthly highlight reports that keep a fair few of your team members busy on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.

What jumps out at you?

(You have to step up and step out and get out of the institutionalised detail)

Do the documents really shout about what’s going to have changed at the end of it?

Do the documents/discussions pull out how the customer experience will be improved and how the customer will have pain points addressed in a way to deal with your business in a more efficient and effective way?

Do the documents/discussions describe the effort needed from those beyond the core programme team to embed and adopt the changes that the project will enable?

Do the documents/discussions describe what will stop, be “put in run off”, “decommissioned” made “redundant” and ultimately effort “redeployed” to address the growth/efficiencies that the initiative states in the benefits case?

I fear that too many of the documents/discussions and steering committees spend time focusing on:-

1. Costs

2. Time lines

3. Project resource challenges

4. Project risks that need mitigation to stay on time, on cost and deal with resource contentions.

These aspects have to change .. the key is not so much the projects it’s the outcomes .. it’s

1. How the business will have the ability to change as a result of the time, cost and effort applied?

2. It’s the key leadership aspects of supporting customers and employees to go on the change adoption curve post go live

3. It’s the key management areas of process changes and impacted business practices that need to recalibrate and sync up with the art of the possible that the project unlocks.

4. It’s how the knowledge of any new tech can be shared beyond the key man dependent / subject matter expertise and for that knowledge to grow to continue to drive full value from the investment

5. It’s having some forethought to the new data and user behavioural insight that any new system / new functionality will bring to the business – how the new data and insight will flow into decision making and enhance business performance

I could go on, it’s at least these 5 points and more that you should see jump out at you when you read the slide decks, the project documentation and the highlight reports.

Yes the project team have to be focused on time, cost, resource however these are secondary output considerations it’s the outcomes and the focus on these that often involve change beyond the project team and into the operational teams that will be impacted where the real focus needs to be dialled up and far more explicitly laid out In steering group discussions.