What are the top three tips you could give someone who is about to embark on a major transformation program?
Sandeep Rao: Do not overthink requirements. By the time you’ve imagined, elicited, documented, communicated them, built against them and put to production your customers’ and users’ needs and expectations have moved on. Workshop with all relative parties (P.O., Arch, Dev, Test, change and SME) , build and deploy iteratively in small increments as rapidly as you can. Fail fast, correct and iterate again. Executive sponsorship. Your CEO needs to be sponsoring the transformation. Hard decisions need strong decision-makers and none better than your CEO. Do not customise its tempting but it’s an expensive and short-sighted way. Buy your technology smart and after diligence and work with your industry’s user group to change the core product instead
Reportedly, Projects fail from bad scope change management. Why?
Sandeep Rao: No matter how long you take to draw canvases, develop customer and user journeys, and develop epics or detailed requirements it is impossible to cater for all use cases. External influences such as regulatory obligations will force changes on your solution. No design can be 100% water tight day one. Change is the only constant in life hence be ready for it. Allow capacity for change impact assessment, its ok to say NO to change if you can’t afford or deliver on time. Always track and measure impact assessments because you will be asked to explain why your project went over time or budget.
