Establishing business case, benefits realisation and project governance
The Situation
Product Director needed help to provide strategic and operational business decision support, ensuring that the future product roadmap was both strategically aligned and delivered benefits realisation internally and to customers, building a competitive moat and commercial revenue.
- There was a lack of strategic focus, evidence and objective based innovation
- Solution development was driven by personal projects, changing priorities and assumption
- There was little awareness of cost and planning
- Risk management and project governance required improvement
- Lack of architectural resource, documentation and knowledge transfer had resulted in a culture of ‘just get it done’ and technical debt
The Task
I was brought in to lead on an innovative e-prescribing project that had already been marketed to customers. Beyond initial ideation no research or analysis had been conducted. There was no business case, but there was a solution.
My task was to
- Identify stakeholders
- Establish SMART Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
- Produce a Business Case
- Elicit requirements
- Engage and collaborate with customers
- Deliver a solution
The Action / Approach
I quickly highlighted a lack of structure, best practice, governance and risk in approach:
- Provided guidance and methodology
- Identified stakeholders, RACI and project ownership
- Helped rapidly gain & build upon relevant knowledge, skills and regulation
- Highlighted complexity and inefficiency of operational, product and technical ecosystem
- Targeted & prioritised opportunities for improvement
- Established SMART objectives and value added key results (OKRs)
- Surveyed customers to ascertain need & levels of interest
- Elicited requirements, collaborating with SMEs
- Documented Requirements Specification, facilitating approval
- Conducted preliminary tender & discovery, ascertaining available options and estimated costs
- Led on business case creation & benefits realisation
- Assisted with cost benefit analysis and forecasting
- Engaged with customers, establishing focus groups for collaboration and UX design
- Functional analysis & solution architecture for MVP
- Introduced project governance and assurance
- Reduced disconnected approach, effort, delivery and bias
- Helped prevent a repeat of the same mistakes and unnecessary cost
The Result
A clearly defined and strategically aligned project was established with clear lines of ownership. Costs were clearly understood, product direction and investment agreed, saving the organisation from developing capability they a) couldn’t afford and b) would struggle with customer adoption.
- Assisted with strategic alignment and design of the product roadmap
- Provided strategic and operational business decision support
- Optimised service efficiency and effectiveness
- Improved cross-business collaboration and asset utilisation
- Improved project governance
- Owned and mitigated risks
- Introduced best practice
- Saved organisation >£500k
Additionally, helped relieve associated pains:
- Reduce tendency to ‘solutionise’ and jump into costly continuous development
- Lack of strategic focus & evidence based product management
- Lack of golden thread from strategy to requirements and projects
- Lack of best practice, governance and assurance within the project framework
- Inherited technical debt due to lack of knowledge transfer, documentation and architectural investment
