An implementation produces outcomes at four levels, and only one of them is normally contracted.
The technical outcome: the system exists and functions within agreed parameters.
The operational outcome: people can use it to perform their work, including the interruptions, exceptions and time pressure the process documentation left out.
The behavioural outcome: they do. The intended practices are performed, and the previous ones stop.
The organisational outcome: the promised value appears.
Each is necessary for the next. None of them causes the next. Technical delivery makes operational use possible without guaranteeing it. Usability makes adoption more likely without producing it. And adoption can be complete while the value fails to appear, if the process was wrong or the original assumptions were mistaken.
Most projects contract the first and assume the other three.
That gap is why an organisation can experience an implementation as a disappointment while its own project archive records an achievement. The archive is not lying. It is reporting the only outcome anybody agreed to measure.
Built to Be Used sets out how to define and own all four before the project starts.
#ProjectManagement #BenefitsRealisation #ITimplementation
An implementation produces outcomes at four levels, and only one of them is normally contracted.
The technical outcome: the system exists and functions within agreed parameters.
The operational outcome: people can use it to perform their work, including the interruptions, exceptions and time pressure the process documentation left out.
The behavioural outcome: they do. The intended practices are performed, and the previous ones stop.
The organisational outcome: the promised value appears.
Each is necessary for the next. None of them causes the next. Technical delivery makes operational use possible without guaranteeing it. Usability makes adoption more likely without producing it. And adoption can be complete while the value fails to appear, if the process was wrong or the original assumptions were mistaken.
Most projects contract the first and assume the other three.
That gap is why an organisation can experience an implementation as a disappointment while its own project archive records an achievement. The archive is not lying. It is reporting the only outcome anybody agreed to measure.
Built to Be Used sets out how to define and own all four before the project starts.
#ProjectManagement #BenefitsRealisation #ITimplementation
This article accompanies the book Built to Be Used.