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Critical factors that are frequently overlooked in the execution of digital transformation projects
Critical factors that are frequently overlooked in the execution of digital transformation projects

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For first mover advantage, proper digital transformation project execution is essential. We've probably all seen how impressive everything looks on paper or in a framework—from planning to budgeting to strategies to technologies—but when it comes to carrying out day-to-day tasks and estimating, we often lose our bearings and begin missing deadlines from the very beginning.

Though there are many important factors to consider in order to ensure proper execution for the entire ecosystem and successful deliveries, I would like to focus on three of them because these are areas where we are not giving enough attention.

 

Right Alignment of Stakeholders - Aligning right person for the task in hand and asking right question to right stakeholder.

Simply allocating a body to a task without understanding the skills, knowledge gaps, learning needs, and training plan will not benefit any project. Instead, it will make the entire hierarchy unproductive because the same activity will be performed by many people, using bandwidth and leaving skilled individuals weary because they will wind up doing most of the tasks or participating in everything due to deadlines.

Further, we can definitely train people but continuous assessment is imperative for successful deliveries.So all the leaders at every level should pay attention to skill or competency assessment at all levels and devise plan to address them as short term or long term goals or based on criticality and priority.

Correct Estimation and Buffer - Consider  Infrastructure, approvals, dependencies, buffer for unknowns while estimating and show impact on roadmap immediately if some parameter deviates and cannot be mitigated.

Estimation cannot be done with many unknowns, therefore make sure you have the essential knowledge needed, even for high-level estimates. Along with functional requirements, infrastructure preparedness, dependency on other requirements, team competency, design finalization, and other factors must be addressed when estimating.

Feedback - Be quick in communicating feedback to necessary stakeholders. Do it with transparency, courtesy, and even support the member to attain a given objective rather than thinking that you would hurt someone. This is the only slogan for constant progress.

 

A few additional important points

  • Accountability and ownership to be clearly defined (pay attention at right person for right task and not just assigning things based on bandwidth). Use RACI.
  • Continuous communication of the vision and importance of any task in hand to all stakeholders.
  • Start right from the inception state and allocate some bandwidth, effort, schedule to absorb digital transformation risks.
  • Ensure every deviation can be shown in terms of cost, effort and quality and hence roadmap should be reviewed.
  • Provide transparent reports from day 1. All the risks will become issues so do not hide them until they become issues. Every stakeholder needs to understand the importance of dates.

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