Defining Your DX Project: Bridging the Gap Between Strategy and Execution

In the midst of a digital transformation (DX) initiative, it can be all too easy to lose sight of the big picture when you’re neck deep in the details. Often, it’s all you can do to keep your head above water until your DX project reaches a go-live. Unfortunately, it’s common for a project to hit milestones and reach the finish line only for the stakeholders to discover that it fails to measure up to the desired business goals.

Imagine that you spend thousands of dollars on a once-in-a-lifetime trip touring the best spots that Hong Kong has to offer, only to spend the entire time scrolling social media on your phone. Technically, you succeeded at taking a trip. You hit every tourist stop, bought some souvenirs, and now you boast a new stamp in your passport, but you did not reap the ultimate goal of the trip: to enrich your life by experiencing a different culture in new and meaningful ways.

If you don’t want your project to leave you wondering, “Why did I even bother?” you must take the time to clearly define your project. Defining a project is an essential step that sets the foundation for all subsequent planning, execution, and measurement. Carefully outlining and building a project plan will help you maintain perspective amidst the myriad of details during execution.

A clearly defined project will bridge the gap between strategy and execution, ensuring it fulfills the intended business goals. Without this context, projects can easily veer off course, leading to wasted time, resources, and ultimately a failure to achieve the desired business objectives.

While outlining all the deliverables that comprise a fully defined project is outside the scope of this single article, we will give an overview of the types of questions you need to be asking in order to lay a foundation for each deliverable.

In future articles we will break down each project artifact in more detail, including the project charter and a project management plan, as well as the project budget and timeline, providing you with everything you need to achieve meaningful change through your transformational journey.

Strategies for Early Wins: How to Deliver Value Early and Often in Your Project

Before we explore the characteristics of a well-defined project, we must first touch on one of the most critical aspects of a project: scope. When defining the scope of a DX project, you must strike the right balance between manageable increments and sufficient value. Taking on more than is necessary can ultimately lead to the derailment of the project timeline and budget.

The key is to focus on delivering value early and often, which not only maintains stakeholder engagement and prevents burnout, but also provides tangible benefits to the organization throughout the project lifecycle.

This approach necessitates the identification and prioritization of the project’s core features or functionalities that must be included to meet the primary objectives. This is where the concept of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) becomes crucial. An MVP is the most pared-down version of a product that can still meet the defined objectives and deliver value to the end-users.

Determining the MVP allows a project team to concentrate on what is absolutely necessary for the project’s success, streamlining development and mitigating risk. Once the MVP is identified, you can explore opportunities to expand upon that foundation in subsequent projects or phases.

From Idea to Implementation: Characteristics of a Well-Defined Project

A well-defined project is not merely a list of tasks to be completed; it is a carefully crafted plan that addresses the who, what, when, why, and how of an initiative. The following series of questions are designed to encourage you to think of everything that a well-defined project encompasses. Your answers to each of these questions will inform the building of your project charter, project management plan, and more, setting a firm foundation for the planning and execution of your initiative.

The characteristics of a well-defined project include:

Critical business objectives and milestones: The most important piece of a well-defined project is to clearly tie it to a business objective and then list the necessary milestones to reach that objective. Ask yourself, what are the critical business objectives I need to achieve and when do I need to accomplish them? This will help ensure the project is aligned with and supports the overarching goals of the organization.

Structure: It is necessary to structure a project to maintain a balance of forward momentum without overwhelming the team. Ask yourself, how can you structure this project in a way where you start to see tangible benefits sooner than later without waiting for everything to be perfect? This will help build momentum and keep the project moving forward.

Necessary ROI: Determine the base amount of ROI necessary to receive from the project. This requires an overview of the budget and the estimated return from the project. We will cover building a project budget in more detail in a future article.

Governance structure: Ask yourself, how should we set up a governance structure so stakeholders and executive leaders can monitor progress and provide strategic guidance throughout?

Project quality measurement: Determine how you will ensure quality execution of the project and the use of quality milestone checklists. This will require you to ask yourself what steps are being taken to produce a quality outcome. This may look like presenting for stakeholders at key milestones to receive their approval on proposed designs, ensuring the project status report includes specific reporting that gives senior leaders visibility into their required KPIs, or ensuring there is a project sponsor that is actively visible and engaged throughout the project.

Roles & responsibilities: Identify the key people that are going to be the difference makers and change agents to make this project successful. This could be a project sponsor, project manager, or even key team members who have the necessary skills and expertise to drive the project forward.

Assumptions: Given the impracticality of conducting limitless upfront analysis, beginning a project requires making certain assumptions until evidence suggests otherwise. What assumptions are guiding your project’s initiation? It’s crucial to identify these assumptions and consistently reassess, refine, and question them as new information emerges.

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The Project Management Trifecta: 3 Deliverables of Project Definition

Armed with the answers to the questions above, you can build the following deliverables, each of which will be covered in depth in a future article:

Business Success Criteria: These are clearly defined, measurable goals for the project. They must be directly tied to the overarching business objectives you established when you defined your organizational priorities, which laid the foundation for your technology roadmap. Additionally, determining the baseline for these goals is a crucial step in this process.

Project Charter: This document provides the details of the agreed upon success criteria, detailing the project scope to ensure clarity and alignment. It comprehensively documents the approach, including all underlying assumptions and the governance structure, minimizing confusion. Furthermore, it explicitly defines the roles and responsibilities, assigning clear accountability and expectations to project members to facilitate smooth collaboration.

Project Management Plan (PMP): This document comprehensively defines the details for the project management strategy, including the methodology that will be used, the communication strategy, and the Organizational Change Management (OCM) approach. Additionally, it will define how the project quality will be measured and monitored, and how each of the following project areas will be defined and maintained:

• Schedule
• Requirements
• Configuration
• Process Diagrams
• Scope
• Test Plan
• Costs
• Risks

It should be noted that once the PMP is completed, the project sponsor and project manager should agree to it and sign it to formalize the management of the project. This will help ensure alignment and commitment from project leadership. There should also be a formalized process in place to manage any deviations from the documented management plan in order to maintain transparency and accountability.

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The Building Blocks of Digital Transformation

Defining a DX project is an essential step that sets the foundation for all subsequent planning, execution, and measurement. Investing your time and effort into considering these characteristics of a well-defined project will yield exponential results as you continue building out each deliverable for the project, ensuring strategic alignment with organizational objectives. This alignment is the key to delivering maximum value, sustaining momentum by delivering value early and often, and driving meaningful, transformational change for your organization.

Each stage of our Digital Transformation (DX) Roadmap is designed to leverage insights from the previous step, informing and enriching the subsequent one. When followed faithfully, this roadmap will guide you not only to a project’s completion, but your organizations holistic and sustained success for years after the go-live date.

Join us as we continue along the path toward DX success, venturing deeper into the intricate details such as building a project charter, defining business success criteria, and creating a project management plan. Subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter for insights and practical tips to help you succeed in your self-directed DX initiatives.

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