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Why are we doing this?

The type of projects we are involved in today are infinitely more complex than they were only a few years ago. More dimensions, more technological possibilities, more stakeholders impacted directly or indirectly, higher expectations to the end result, wandering scope etc. This consequently makes it critical to have a crystal clear, well defined purpose, and a clear scope which may not be agreed by all involved, but are nevertheless accepted by all

UNIVERSAL USE CASE
As you scope out the different elements and stages of the project, ask fellow members who have been through similar projects recently to review your plan and provide input and dos / don’ts on the various aspects of planning; time frames, chronology, dependencies, resource allocation etc.

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What exactly are we designing & delivering?

We no longer deliver a platform; an intranet or a website. We deliver part of a customer- or employee journey; an experience made up of numerous parts. These can be both interdependent, sequential and personalised... This makes our deliverables highly complex and it is more important than ever that we are clear on the scope and how our “piece” fits into the complete picture.

UNIVERSAL USE CASE
Ask experienced peers with similar objectives and deliverables to review your design drafts and overall plan in relation to goals, objectives, milestones and tactics before locking yourself into a “point of no return” and get them to provide examples of previous work for inspiration

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How do you assess needs in the most revealing and beneficial way?

How do you gather input from stakeholders? How can you test it? Do you e.g. conceptualise things your stakeholders don’t yet know they might benefit from. It’s all about striking the right balance between solving actual business challenges and prevent stalemate; yet at the same time avoid “evolution for evolution’s sake”

USEFUL USE CASE
Ask fellow members for their dos and don’ts when collecting asks, needs, wishes and wants and find out how they obtain the most useful, unbiased input from their stakeholders.

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How do we ensure we (and our chosen partner) are on par with the most important market trends?

When scoping and designing a new solution, many rely on”looking at the flaws and problems with what we have already got plus the ideas and examples their chosen external partner brings to the table. Any “browsing around” tends to be done on the sites of competitors from the same or closely related fields. In our experience, the most inspiring and eye-opening discoveries are made outside your own “sphere” and by simply providing a brief description of your status quo and end objective, we can find recent examples of projects of similar scope and direction. And apart from simply getting access to the end result, we can introduce you to the people behind, so you can ask them about their journey and decisions made along the way.

UNIVERSAL USE CASE
Make a call out for recent examples of solutions similar to the one you are working on and get access to not only the result, but the creators; the people behind.

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Is your proposal ambitious enough? Will it “ruffle feathers” anywhere? If so, is it best to avoid this or tackle it head on?

You have put many hours into drafting the new strategy for the area you are responsible for. But of course, the area covered by your strategy never sits in isolation. Have you remembered to check the potential impact of implementing your strategy on all other relevant operational areas? Dependencies, knock-on / ripple-effects, delays elsewhere [...] Get other members with similar recent experiences to share how they arrived at their check-list and whether they made any unfortunate discoveries - which you can then avoid!

UNIVERSAL USE CASE
Ask the members in your ON LOCATION group to provide the harshest feedback possible. This will expose any missed flaws or gaps. You can also ask fellow members to sit through an actual practice run of how you plan to deliver / present the strategy to your internal stakeholders.

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How do you choose the right partner for this exact project?

How do you find out whether the potential partner will be a good match? Which criteria would be most telling about their suitability? What are the most important traits? How do you test whether they actually understand not merely the trends and tendencies in the market, but your specific needs, challenges and opportunities? Will an interview and a presentation suffice? Or should you plan for a more extensive or elaborate process with more involvement from the pitching partners.

UNIVERSAL USE CASE
Ask members for recent experiences with procurement- and selection processes; criteria and weighting, the process and interactions and the most optimal ways of briefing and assessing the bidders.

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Do you know the full extent of the content estate you have got? And who owns it? Have you decided what to migrate / archive / scrap?

Almost regardless of which type of content migration you happen to face, the amount of content that has to be mapped out and assessed will be enormous. The work undertaken to get ready for GDPR has brought about better practices around how organisations manage content, but it is rarely perfectly maintained and the sheer scale of the task means that a thorough content mapping exercise is always a sizeable one. Which criteria will you deploy to classify and determine what to do with the various categories of content? How will you document it all and who will you involve? Will you simply follow any legal requirements or will you be doing a cleanout?

UNIVERSAL USE CASE
Ask the network for examples and notes from recent mapping projects and templates or planning tools used during successful ones.

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What’s the most efficient and least disruptive way of doing it?

How will you plan and prioritise the various elements of the exercise? How much time will you set off for it? Will you use an automated migration tool or do it all manually? Will you run parallel live environments? There is no “gold standard” or right / wrong approach and stories of successful, on-time migrations are rare.

UNIVERSAL USE CASE
Ask fellow members for templates, planning approaches or content migration tools used during successful recent migration projects.

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Quick and targeted access to snapshots, surveys, benchmarks and up-to-date industry data

If you need to weigh up new options, but have little to base your decision on, we can easily and quickly survey a relevant sample of our members. You won’t get thousands of respondents, but a small sample will still give you a good steer. If you are looking for answers to tactical questions about performance or for up-to-date input on what “best-in-class” looks like, a mini-benchmarking exercise might be the best answer. Again, quick and easy for us to set in motion and as long as we keep the scope and expectations within reason, our members are generally happy to participate. These tools may not replace the need to commission larger pieces of work with external service providers, but they will leave you with a basis for comparison and with the answers / input, you will be better equipped to choose the appropriate format for you and to brief any chosen external partner.

UNIVERSAL USE CASE
Ask your ConnectMinds knowledge broker to identify and find relevant candidates for comparison; benchmark or industry data.

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Identifying the most appropriate and revealing methods for testing the effectiveness - at the right time in the process

Which method is the most telling at which stage of the process? Is there a combination of quantitative and qualitative tests that is particularly useful - and why? And what does it take in terms of resources and time?

UNIVERSAL USE CASE
Ask fellow members how they test their solutions and services before release or launch.

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When should you announce the introduction of something new? How should you communicate any expected impact and consequences?

What’s the right and most impactful way to launch the product or service you are working on? Is it wise to create a momentum through a gradual build-up - or might that lead to a case of over-promising and under-delivering? Should you pilot it “out of the spotlight” before the big launch? How much should be revealed before?

UNIVERSAL USE CASE
Get other members to share experiences from their past launches; timings, rollout scenarios, effective communications ideas etc.

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How do you find and get in touch with existing clients and users of the solutions on your shortlist?

Get the really useful references - including those the vendor may not have chosen to give you.
We work in a field where the number of tools, solutions and services promising to make our customers happier, our colleagues more productive and our own lives easier grows by the day.
Some of them are solutions looking for a problem; others extremely useful.
So how do you evaluate, shortlist and assess? And once you get to the final shortlist, who do you talk to, not about features and functionalities, but about how the solution works in the real world?
The vendor will typically provide a list of [happy] customers; in itself not a surprise.

UNIVERSAL USE CASE
Call on the network to test the claimed usefulness of the solution and to hear first hand how the solution has been implemented and used in different contexts, the performance, cost of operation and maintenance etc.

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