Across different industry sectors and country borders, organisations are embracing DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION. Whatever your progress on digital initiatives, it is never too late to learn from others' mistakes.

A major study by MIT Sloan Management Review and CapGemini Consulting [1] identified a number of common barriers to digital transformation programmes amongst 1,500+ organizations:

1. Leadership
Lack of urgency and pace (63%) was frequently reported, though this is hardly surprising when only one third of the companies studied didn't share the digital vision openly with their staff, and made even worse where the executives were not aligned on the vision. To achieve the necessary buy-in and momentum, it is critical to establish the digital vision as part of the DNA of the organisation. This requires the value system to be updated so that everyone affected can see for themselves that the old way of doing things is now out of alignment with the new values. This helps to drive natural course-correction and can help generate a pull-force whereby people are asking for and welcoming the changes.

2. Business case
A number of companies struggled with defining a Return on Investment (ROI) for their digital transformation investment. Having difficulties with quantifying the benefits and therefore not spending enough time at the early stage to understand the benefits, this led to weak justification for the changes they wanted to make. My own experience has taught me that digital transformation can involve a lot of 'enablers' that in themselves do not offer significant measurable benefits. This can be challenging when the board is asked to approve investments with negative NPV based on boiler-plate business case models. Digital transformation may therefore include a new way of assessing business cases, e.g. new measures, new timescales.

3. Governance
Only 40% of the companies followed a formal governance model and three out of four did not have any formal KPIs to measure progress of the transformation over time. So, what is going on? Due to the wide impact of digital transformation, it may be difficult to decide where the transformation effort should sit within the organisation, who should sponsor it, and which budget pot the investment will come from. The Executive Sponsor must have full support from the Board to enable changes across functional silos and lines of accountability. Without formal programme governance established, it will be very difficult to set priorities across the organisation and to secure resource commitments against business-as-usual demands. The KPIs need not be limited to financial benefits, but should take into account other measurable benefits such as Net Promoter Scores (NPS), simplified processes, reduced hand-over points, etc. The key to measuring transformation progress is to start measurements BEFORE business changes are being implemented. Otherwise, you will not have a proper baseline to measure against. 

4. Culture & Capabilities
Unsurprisingly, digital transformation programmes met the same barriers as other major business change initiatives: lack of skills to execute the programme, conflicting priorities and resistance to change. According to McKinsey & Co, most companies are limited to 2 or 3 concurrent major change initiatives [2] and a digital transformation programme is likely to count as one of them. The fit between a digital programme and other ongoing programmes need to be carefully assessed to resolve potential issues around scope, governance, resources and priorities as part of the digital transformation planning stage.
The risk of skills shortages can be partly mitigated by bringing in external consultants, but a successful transformation team must include respected managers from the organisation to lead in different areas.
​With an openly communicated vision, a strong business case and governance framework, you have the means to manage priorities and avoid many potential conflicts. With strong leadership from the top, leading by example, this gives the confidence that staff needs in order to overcome skepticism and the natural resistance to change.

References:
[1] CapGemini: Embracing Digital Technology a New Strategic Imperative (2013)
[2] McKinsey: Finding Your Digital Sweet Spot

Project management best practice recommends that lessons be learnt and applied to future projects or later stages of the same project. Do you follow best practice with regards to lessons learnt? Here is what typically happens:

1. A lessons learnt workshop is conducted at the end of the project (if time allows before the project team is re-assigned to another project). This means that many lessons are forgotten and those that were captured are not leveraged into the current project. 

2. A lessons learnt log is completed to tick the box on the project closure form and once filed the lessons are never looked at again. The effort of capturing the lessons are wasted and the value of the lessons lost.

3. New projects are initiated without any consideration of lessons learnt from previous projects. Lessons are NOT learnt, but mistakes are allowed to be repeated and flaws perpetuated. 

Why are we not learning our lessons? At the start of a project, everyone is focused on getting on with the project and supercharged with optimisms. Once a project is underway, the focus is on meeting milestones, managing scope and dealing with in-flight challenges that reflective lessons learnt workshops are postponed to the end of the project. When the end of the project is finally reached, the incentive to do a lessons learnt workshop is low as any lessons will only benefit future projects. This is a vicious cycle.

In summary, few lessons are captured, even fewer lessons are benefiting the current project, and hardly any lessons are considered by future projects. The consequences are that many organizations stagger from one project failure straight into another failure. This reminds me of Albert Einstein's definition of insanity: "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".

With the benefit of a lot of cumulative hindsight, we would recommend that the Project Management Office (PMO) takes the lead in conducting lessons learnt workshops during and at the end of each project and applying these to future projects. Alternatively, an independent expert such as Caleidoscope Associates can help companies to benefit from lessons learnt by capturing, analyze and leveraging these. 

Here is a great quote that made me think about how people approach the different ways people approach project planning. This quote is from Hugh Lawrie:

"There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any."

What is your approach to planning? Do you dive into MS Project or open your favourite project definition template? Or are you more of a avantgard whiteboard brainstorming mind-mapping type?

Whatever your starting point, a some point you need to move from planning to action. For a simple project the plan comes together quickly and is ready for action. What about large or complex projects; do you have to plan the whole project before executing the plant.

Common planning approaches for larger projects are to divide the projects into smaller project phases or sub-projects. This enables you to start the project delivery as early as possible without having to plan out the complete project before starting. No matter how meticulously you plan a project, plans will need to change as reality hits and assumptions are replaced with facts.

IT systems are typically brought in to automate and formalise business processes. Over time, systems are upgraded and new applications are integrated to support new products and organisational changes such as business process outsourcing.

Every time these changes occur, there is an opportunity to re-visit the business processes to check that they are still valid or could be further improved. Most of the technical projects that I encounter ignores the business process improvement opportunity. For those projects that attempts to improve the processes as well as the supporting systems, the process improvement is hampered by functional silos and outdated business policies. Too many business leaders and managers are clinging to the status quo and not looking forwards. Why is that? Usually because the improvement initiative isn't theirs and they have not fully bought into it.

Example: the current policy is to credit check all new customers before providing them with a service. When a new product is launch that carries negligible financial risk the old credit check policy is still applied (and reducing sales). In this example, the business needs to change its policies, processes and IT systems. Any one area is not enough on its own. The alignment from business purpose and strategic goals, through operational policies, to business processes and systems need to be re-assessed whenever a change proposed to any of the above. A change to one area will impact the others as sure as night follows day.

With the right approach, such impact assessments can be done with minimal efforts and time. Done badly, it can consume vast amounts of time and resources, and jeopardise the whole project.