7 behaviours to adopt to ensure the FAILURE of your technology-driven project
Yes, I know, this title is not phrased in a positive way. But sometimes you have to use the absurd to get your point across. So, let’s get on with it!
Want to ensure the failure of your project aiming to implement a contemporary digital solution in your business?
Adopt the following behaviours and I’m sure you’ll get there fast:
- Focus all your attention on how your technology solution works, and let it dictate how you will operate in the future;
- Simplify your life and transpose your current ways of doing into your new solution, as they are today, without questioning them;
- Believe that you can lead such a project on your own, and that the integrator you’ve chosen will support you in preparing your business and resolving associated issues;
- Hire a multitude of competing firms to inundate you with advices and opinions, often contradictory, and only listen to the ones you like;
- Religiously apply “best practices” because they’re fashionable, even if they’re ill-adapted to your reality or you don’t really master them;
- Apply an activity-driven “check-done” approach to reduce the complexity of your project and rely almost exclusively on the production of deliverables (documents, presentations) and a panoply of e-mails for “communication”;
- Keep the thinking and the sharing of information within your project team and avoid wasting time discussing the concerns of your other stakeholders.
Of course, you could put your common sense to good use and enlist the help of professionals who have real experience with making this type of project a success. People who will defend YOUR interests against the solution provider and its integrator, and who will accompany YOU beyond the concerns specific to the configuration and deployment of a technological solution.
But if you do, be careful, you might make your project a success.
Food for thought!
You plan to adopt a new digital solution and this post got your attention? Contact me privately to discuss it further.
© Eric Magnan, Pragmatik Advisory Services Inc, 2023
About the author:
Eric Magnan is a career consultant who founded Pragmatik Advisory Services in 2005. Since the late ’80s, he has assisted some 30 private and public companies through more than 70 missions aimed at adopting new technological solutions or new ways of working based on digital technology advances. He holds several professional certifications, which he puts down to good use for his customers through mission-driven commitments tailored to their context, constraints and needs.